Born in 1985, Yuima Nakazato graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2008, before founding YUIMA NAKAZATO Co., Ltd. in 2015. In 2016, Yuima was formally selected as a guest designer for Haute Couture Week. Since then, he has continued presenting his collections at Paris Fashion Week, offering his trademark fusion of technology and craftsmanship. From 2021, Yuima initiated the FASHION FRONTIER PROGRAM, an educational project for ambitious, next-generation fashion designers. Yuima seeks to address social issues while pursuing cuttingedge fashion through his collections presented at Haute Couture Week.
My heart has been made heavy by all the things I’ve read and seen from around the world these past six months. Overcome by feelings of confusion and powerlessness, all I could do was turn away from my phone.
My hands, however, continued creating; sketching pictures, shaping clay, tearing up old fabric to be woven and dyed anew.
I suspect I found the process of trial and error, of attempting to create something with my own two hands, to bring some comfort—almost as if I were striving against this age and all its unceasing flood of digitization.
When faced with unanswerable questions, ancient peoples turned to avatars for answers. One small ethnic group, for example, believed that birds were the personifications of the gods, watching over us from above, their cries warning of calamities to come.
In a similar vein, the shamans, who served as bridges to other worlds, were conveyors of a certain something that the rest of us could never see. Wondering what messages they would have for us in this day and age, I devoted myself to my work.
The thought occurred to me that I would like to create this collection in blue—the blue of the planet Earth. To our eyes, the sky and the sea both appear blue, but this is nothing more than a visual phenomenon. Dipping a piece of cloth into the ocean will not turn it blue. This color is something of a mystery—we can see it with our eyes, and yet it doesn’t really exist. Wearing blue garments, I thought, might almost make a person feel as if they were draped in messages from one of the avatars of old.
We created this collection by using dead stock—materials without a purpose, left waiting in storage due to damage, overproduction, or a myriad of other factors.
While each of them is special, attaching actual value to them is difficult.
With a small shift in perspective, however, they can become something entirely new.
I wanted to create something beautiful from these dregs—from something that would usually be regarded as little more than industrial waste. That perspective is something I wanted to challenge through this collection.
The glimpses of sky visible through the buildings outside my window in Tokyo brought to mind the rest of our shared planet. Almost in a state of prayer, I worked towards the creation of this collection.
Yuima Nakazato
Credits: Photo Christina V Henningstad for Fabuk