Sacai Spring 2021 Menswear
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One of the delights of a Sacai show is discovering which historical figure or fictional character or vaunted institution Chitose Abe chooses to quote. In January, it was Albert Einstein (“I believe in intuition”) and a year ago it was Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski (“the rug really tied the room together”); even The New York Times got the Sacai treatment several seasons back. The pandemic made Abe’s July trip from Tokyo to Paris to present her men’s spring and women’s resort collections an impossibility, but the lockdown didn’t prevent a new collaboration.
This season, she partnered with the American artist Hank Willis Thomas, who gave Abe permission to use the phrase “Love Over Rules”; it features in his neon light installations and in a gothic font on Sacai’s new T-shirts and parkas. Thomas dedicated the San Francisco installation of Love Over Rules to his cousin, who died suddenly in 2000; apparently the words were lifted from his last voice message to the artist. Over Zoom, Abe explained that “even before the coronavirus situation, I believed in this idea. No matter your race, culture, or sexuality, love overrules.”
Due to Japan’s COVID-19 lockdown, Abe worked on this collection from home. “It allowed me to think about the things I loved about past collections,” she said. This new one features many of her favorite archival fabrics mashed-up to create tank tops, pajama shirts, wrap skirts, and long, loose shirt dresses. The linings of the “Love Over Rules” jackets are lively patchworks of the different prints. Abe is one of the few designers with a distinctive enough point of view to make this sort of nostalgizing a viable formula.
The lookbook has a “Sacai for real life” vibe; Abe wanted to portray how she actually wears her clothes: not in “full looks,” but rather with her Nike leggings or her APC jeans. That jibes nicely with our more circumscribed daily routines. Still, she’s hoping she’ll be back in Paris with her next collection. “Even if it’s just 10 minutes long, being able to create that experience and environment is really important to me,” she says. “I’m preparing so that I can if the opportunity arises.”
Source: VogueRunway
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