Yuima Nakazato is deepening his dialogue between costume design and haute couture, this season staging a theatrical show at Paris's Maison des Métallos. Drawing from Japanese theater traditions, where quick costume changes signal character evolution or the march of time, the designer used just five models, a team of dressers, and himself to transform layered, kimono-inspired pieces live on stage.
The collection, titled "Inferno," pits water against fire. Nakazato printed his own photographs from a trip to Tenerife onto recycled fabric panels, shaping them into wave-like forms and embroidering others with gold chains that flicker like flames. Beneath elongated, watery silhouettes peeked his signature "fragile armor" - ceramic chainmail. For the first time, he used digital tools to mold hundreds of tiny clay tiles into bustiers that shifted from icy blue to fiery red, silver, and gold, some topped with demon-horned masks or billowing silk panels.
The finale brought new overlayers: a translucent coat in furls of printed fabric that moved like dancing fire, and another embroidered with tiny bells that chimed with every step. Nakazato's belief that couture is contemporary art recently earned permanent recognition - three of his archival looks now belong to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. With "Inferno," he left no doubt.
Originally reported by WWD