The KENZO Fall-Winter 2024 Women’s and Men’s Collection evolves the Maison’s new elegance established by Artistic Director Nigo through a study of cross-cultural exchange.

As the custodian of the house built by Kenzo Takada – a fellow Japanese designer in the French capital – Nigo considers the introduction of non-Western influences to the domain of Paris fashion key to his practice. In a cinematic analogy of that transition, Nigo is guided by George Lucas’ use of the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa in the successful creation of the Star Wars universe: an original, complete fantasy culture like no other.

The exploration unfolds in details and silhouettes rooted in Japanese tradition but infused with the associations of sci-fi-related uniforms:

a kimono coat imbued with the lines of a warrior cape, a weave inspired by the wood print of a Japanese hakeshi baten fireman’s jacket

evoking an ancient-future graphic, or a plissé dress draped like the cloak of a space fiction heroine.

A miniature dot pattern informed by the Edo Komon of fifteenth-century kimonos re-manifests as a star constellation in prints and embroideries.

Throughout, nods to the Western utility and military wardrobes materialise in flight jackets, cargo suits and shearling jackets,

elusively embedded with the codes of another universe.