Chitose Abe swerved convention this season, showing her men’s collection with a stand-alone show and just a few women’s resort looks tossed in the mix. The designer said she really wanted to focus on menswear this season, and to subvert the classics with her signature splicing of fabrics, colors and genres.
Without the women’s looks to distract, Abe dug deep into the ’80s preppy archive, working with Brooks Brothers and looking at the era’s classic shapes through an edgier — and less-polished ’90s lens.
She took the navy blazer, the building block of private school uniforms and country club luncheons, and sliced open the lapels to reveal the linings, and then took her scissors to silk ties, draping swathes of striped fabric over the shoulders of blazers or turning them into long and loose scarf-cum-cravats, which she knotted low on the chest.
Blazers with shiny gold buttons got the most radical treatment. They were cropped, adorned with khaki trench details around the neck and pockets and finished off with floppy scarves and flowy trousers, with the tousle-haired models looking like slightly drunk sailors on shore leave.
Abe loosened up blue button-down shirts, too, adding colorful tassels to the plackets, or popping floppy rosettes, made from cut-up silk, on the breast. Those rosettes also bloomed on boxy electric bright shirts, and denim and leather jackets, which she paired with loose trousers, some with utilitarian straps.
She sliced and spliced outerwear and footwear, too, cutting off the sleeves of one toggle-front coat and turning another a bright canary yellow, the ideal uniform for an outdoor rave.
She also worked with Birkenstock to create hybrid sandals with extra straps or XL buckles, and took archive images and album art from Soul II Soul, the 1980s musical collective, and turned them into a collage fabric, showcasing her endless talent for reinvention.