Anrealage RTW Spring 2022
Kunihiko Morinaga, creative director of the Japanese label Anrealage, has always played with perception, and the online presentation format seems to have given him new freedom to explore.
Earlier this year, he collaborated with Oscar-nominated animator Mamoru Hosoda on “Belle,” which premiered in Cannes to a 14-minute standing ovation, one of the longest in the festival’s history. It centers on a bullied teen who becomes a star in the virtual world through her avatar. Morinaga consulted on the film’s costumes.
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Working together again for this collection, the pair looked to blending the real world with the virtual one, resulting in a film that opens and closes with Belle, and weaves in and out between the two dimensions.
Virtual models walked through Belle’s animated world — all bright lights and blinking billboards — then human models repeated the steps in front of a display of the same scene. The film is shown on a screen within a screen, and also cuts to characters watching the fashion show on their phone — clever commentary on the way we consume everything as “content” now.
The pieces themselves are a series of triangles and polygon shapes cut out in Pop Art colors, pixelated pastels, beiges, browns and various shades of denim and bonded together — not sewn — to create seamless garments. The result is cocoon-shouldered dresses, fitted trousers topped with slim-line coats or oversize parkas that have movement and flow while also feeling protective of the body. Looks are topped with distorting masks that would be favored by those that want to thwart facial recognition cameras. And in a nod to sustaining this real world that we have, Morinaga used vintage denim and recycled army jackets to create new looks.
As the worlds blur, the animators rendered refracted light over the last looks, creating an iridescent, almost ethereal glow that can only exist on the screen.
Morinaga has long toyed with the idea of merging with technology. He says he doesn’t believe one world is more valid than the other, and that the lives we create online are equally real. He sees fashion as building a bridge between the two existences. It’s fitting then that while the physical pieces will be available, he is also selling the animated outfits as NFTs.
Launch Gallery: Anrealage RTW Spring 2022
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