Please forgive the free association below. I blame the coffee because I am a product of my culture and we overcaffeinate. (On reflection, it is disturbing that my huge Cthulhu tiki mug has become a perfectly acceptable single serving of coffee.) Really this is just an exercise in sloppily stringing together some of the inspiring fashion items I’ve seen recently.

We begin with a great article over at Tokyo Telephone on Coconogacco, or the Coco-Ten Exhibition at Trans Art Tokyo. The idea here is that the students are able to present their clothes in context before the fashion show:

…the design students of the Coconogacco school curated a series of rooms to contextualize their work which served as art exhibitions in their own right, and it is those that we are going to be looking around today. What you are going to miss out on though is the very real context of these rooms, housed as they were in a deserted seventeen floor building where you could comfortably go 10 minutes without seeing anyone else, all in the chill of the Tokyo winter, the only sound being scraps of found music before you accidentally stumble across a noisecore band rehearsing.

Chiaki Moronaga at The Coco-Ten Exhibition at Trans Art Tokyo.

In the article Samuel points out that you can’t really wear or buy the work seen here. Rather, this is about students being encouraged to be artists, free of ready-to-wear constraints. What you see here may or may not evolve into something wearable or buyable.

Detail from Chiaki Moronaga’s presentation at the Coco-Ten Exhibition at Trans Art Tokyo.

Tokyo is unique in that what is seen on the street is often more original, artful and impractical than what is seen on the runway. Their street scene is about clothes as art. Tommy Ton noted the same in his coverage of the SS 2013 shows for style.com: “The men here love to take risks and don’t hold anything back. It’s inspiring.”

Streetsnappers. Which brings us tidily to Miyaki’s layers in The Cut today:

Miyaki: a study in seemingly effortless perfection. I need to go back to Kobo and rummage through their remnants.

I love the fabrics that make up Miyaki’s silhouette, reminding me of this look from Dido Liu’s AW 2012 collection (more stunning images of her layered looks and info about her “3D lenticular print” at thisispaper or 1GRANARY):

Dido Liu AW 2012

Another look from the collection, quilted this time:

Being a sucker for the topography of quilted surfaces we yield softly to Borre Akkersdijk’s Ready-Made collection, which highlights a production process similar to that of making mattresses:

I owe a debt to thisispaper, who is responsible for introducing me to the work of Liu and Akkersdijk. I do not hold them responsible
for my coffee problem, although I’m tempted to because it’s part of my culture, which is to blame someone else for my problems.