Yumi Katsura & Yuima Nakazato PFW SS2018

Yumi Katsura & Yuima Nakazato Paris Fashion Week SS 2018

Two Famous Japanese Designers had shows at the prestigious Paris Fashion week Spring/Summer 2018. Here are some highlights from last week's spring-summer 2018 shows of Yumi Katsura and Yuima Nakazato. 

Yumi Katsura Show

On sunday, 21 January 2018, Yumi Katsura held her show. As the first fashion show Haute Couture Designer for this season, the audience welcomed the show with great enthusiasm. Yumi Katsura was born in Tokyo, Japan. Rooted in Paris fashion, the shapes of the fashion house symbolize her identity. With her experiences, she achieved a huge success further establishing her as one of the strongest emerging talents in Paris. As an ambassador of these two cultures, she builds a bridge between far East and West with her 2018 spring and summer collection. 

Yumi Katsura announces her Couture collection (Bonds) that was influenced by famous Japanese and European painters such as Hokusai, Monet, Van Gogh and Riviera. In her collection Spring/ Summer, she pays a tribute to the famous painter Hukosai and the traditional Japanese Art (Ukiyo-e). These Japanese woodblock prints greatly inspired western painting. 

When we look at her collection for this season, we realize that she brings her flower motifs and exuberant colors. Deeply concerned by the Japanese savoir faire. She preserves and enhances ancestral methods of creation. Her collections are smooth, graceful, sophisticated and they magnificently highlight a dazzling range of colors.

Yumi Katsura in the end of the show

Seduced by the magic of the master painters Yumi Katsura catches the miracle of Nature. One again wildlife is omnipresent in her creations. Full of prints and life, this collection honors the silk dyeing traditional technique called Yuzen. Yumi Katsura brings the magic where tradition and modernity merge in a poetic embrace.

If for Yumi Katsura, Japanese touch cleverly turned in her collection, but for Yuima Nakazato, mostly his imagination of human and clothing in the future.

Yuima Nakazato Show

Yuima Nakazato is the Japanese Designer based in Paris. On his 4th show for Paris Fashion Week, he announces his couture collection “HARMONAIZE”. Through his mindful thoughts and daily inspirations, he chooses HARMONIZE as his collection concept for this season. The word “Harmonize” illustrates the state in which two very different entities, the human body and garment, continue to develop while complementing each other.

In process of research, Nakazato knew that the idea of "UNIT " that human have evolved is important factor of sustainability. For Example,the exterior structure of the space craft and Japanese ancient repair technic called "boro" were coming from same idea.

In a dialogue with the JAXA space suit development research team, he got inspiration to use recycled industiral materials such as parachute and air bags  for his haute couture. 

The delicate balance and a harmony of entities themselves is the way Yuima Nakazato envisions as the future of human and clothing. His vision and focus of future along with his attention was drawn to one thing: Outer Space. Symbolized by Neil Armstrong’s marking of humans’ first footprints on the moon. The 1960s was a time when humans had grown in enthusiasm and adoration for the universe.

He uses the latest technology in his creation. From the measurement, creation the body pattern to cutting the pattern. For the measurement, the person just have to stand in front of the scanner and it mesures immediately his/her body.

The scanned data will input to the computer.Then the machine cuts clothes into "unit" fitted to the body.Each piece have their own number and they have own place to put to fit just like a puzzle.

At the end, a piece is combined with "craftsmanship" by the hand of the trained person.It is a fusion of digital fabrication and craftsmanship using latest technology.

Yuima Nakazato with his new collection. 

The Space was an unreachable subject that far away from human being that time. More than half a century has passed since then, and with the endless advancement of technology reaching out beyond our world is no longer a dream. Now, this is reality. Clothes fitted to the body of the human using recycle resources and the latest technology. Indeed, clothes which “harmonized” with human body and our planet were born.  

Author & Photo : Gisella AZEVEDO & Tsuyoshi KANEKO