“We thought it would be nice if people wore our clothes and experienced the world in a different way than they had before.” So said Yuji Abe and Yu Kobayashi following Irenisa’s spring show, which unfolded on a humid Thursday evening in a glass-walled studio above Harajuku station.
This time the duo took inspiration from Lucio Fontana, the founder of Spatialism who slashed holes in his canvases, breaking his artworks away from their confinement within the frame. In its own way, Irenisa does the same kind of thing with clothes, and Abe and Kobayashi have mastered their medium enough to make their own deep cuts in ways that feel quietly unusual. To wit: trousers came with double waistbands, collar plackets were intentionally wonky, and pinprick holes arrowed across the chests of sporty nylon blousons, which were pleated at the back so that they rippled across the shoulder blades like drapes.
The brand hasn’t quite mastered leather, however, and the belts felt too stiff and new next to the loucheness of the rest of the fabrics (which were uniformly beautiful). They included a summer wool woven with textured stripes of washi yarn, silk wool satin that danced under light, and T-shirts enlivened with kago-zome, a basket dyeing technique that creates an effect akin to dappled shadows and that looked particularly interesting on an asymmetric T-shirt dress.
This also marked the first time the brand has shown womenswear. Unsurprisingly, women are already customers of Irenisa’s menswear, so the development felt natural, but also served some of this collection’s highest notes, among them a striped wrap skirt with three ties up the side of the thigh—the cotton was just thin enough so that you could see the legs moving against it—plus a sleeveless black dress with pockets that pulled the fabric tight across the crotch. How subtly weird—and also, how sexy!
It’s in these unexpected, slightly freaky moments that Irenisa shines, and it would be interesting to see the duo stretch this further. If somebody’s going to match your freak, you’ve got to let that freak flag fly.
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