Latest news with #KunihikoMorinaga
Asahi Shimbun
24-05-2025
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Visually impaired people inspire fresh-feeling new digs
At a pop-up event at the Shinjuku Takashimaya store, which has already ended, digital signage was used on the walls. The photo was taken in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on April 9. (Nanako Matsuzawa) Takashimaya Co. has collaborated with visually impaired people to create clothes that can be enjoyed by touch, challenging fashion's usual reliance on visual elements. At pop-up events in Tokyo and Osaka, the company aims to show that inclusive designs result in comfortable clothes with enjoyable textures for people who have disabilities—and everyone else. Takashimaya revealed 10 tops designed with features such as easy-access chest pockets for IC cards, and ribbons that don't come untied. They are priced from 8,800 ($61) to 12,100 yen. These are the first creations of a new project called 'Fashion for all your senses,' which was inspired by ideas from Takashimaya employees. The consulting firm Playworks Inc., which is dedicated to realizing inclusive designs, is participating in the project, and Adastria Co. is in charge of product planning. From June last year through January, these companies held workshops with visually impaired people and designed 10 tops based on their feedback. For the T-shirts with chest pockets, the pocket material has a different texture from the rest of the shirt. The shirts with fixed ribbons were designed after hearing visually impaired people say they usually hesitate to wear ribbons, since they wouldn't notice if they became untied. Kunihiko Morinaga, designer of the apparel brand Anrealage, supported the idea and joined the project. He created a dress which can be worn backward and forward. Colors are described in terms that visually impaired people can easily imagine. Pink is described as 'like flowers swaying in warm sunlight,' and yellow 'like fresh vitamin juice that makes you full of energy.' The layout of the sales floor was also carefully designed to be easy to navigate for visitors with canes. The mannequins' feet were secured to the floor so that they won't be knocked over when visitors examine the clothing by touch. Playworks President Keita Takizawa remembers hearing at the workshop, 'I don't want to wear clothes for disabled people.' However, he explained, 'Such feedback motivated project members to design clothes that everyone would want to wear.' Kenta Takemura, Takashimaya's merchandiser and leader of the project, said that a department store's role is to deliver the joy of fashion to diverse people. "We hope this project will help more people to love fashion,' he said. Pop-up events selling the clothes will be held until April 29 in Takashimaya's Osaka store and from May 7 in Tokyo's Nihonbashi store. At the Shinjuku Takashimaya store, the clothes are available in a permanent sales section.
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Anrealage, Light Up Dresses Made Us Look
What's the difference between a gimmick and a good idea? One makes you grimace, the other makes you grin. By that metric, the mesmerizing, mirthful runway show from the Japanese label Anrealage, held in Paris on Tuesday afternoon, was a very good idea. Because after already seeing clothes so square they looked like something out of 'Minecraft,' and after witnessing platform shoes shaped like slip-on Cybertrucks, when then the label's blocky designs agitated to life like an arcade game, the only proper response was to grin. As the designer Kunihiko Morinaga explained after the show, these clothes were produced from yarns laced all over with teensy LED 'balls.' Picture a Times Square billboard packaged into a swaying sack dress. Each design had a battery pack and sensor, allowing the display to be manipulated backstage. (The material is proprietary to Anrealage and was developed with MPLUSPLUS, a Japanese technology design studio.) The result was like 'Tron' crossed with 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' Three flickering dresses recalled the lights of a skyscraper in the hands of a hyperactive toddler. A pair of models marched side by side, their tartan smocks ping-ponging colors back and forth to each other to form new kaleidoscopic tartans as they advanced. For the finale, models clustered together, their frocks devolving into the pixely static of a TV on the fritz, then resolving into a stained-glass motif, a seeming nod to the American Cathedral where the show was put on. Video In the finale, models clustered together, their dresses devolving into the pixely static of a TV on the fritz, then resolving to a stained glass motif before fading to black. Credit Credit... This collection, Mr. Morinaga said backstage through a translator, was inspired by quite an archaic technology: two-sided advertising placards that 'sandwich men' use to shill for businesses. 'Before the design was always fixed, but now we can move the design,' Mr. Moringa said. Here was a fashion show that fully seemed to accept our tech-addled age. It was, at least, a reminder of how static fashion can be. Almost all other labels showing at Paris Fashion Week will continue to use the same wools and cottons that have been in circulation for centuries. Not Mr. Moringa. He is fashion's Carl Sagan, tilting toward the cosmos to question how far one man can take a dress. His previous exploits include clothes that inflated on the runway and tabula rasa ensembles that took on patterns when subjected to UV light. It is a missed opportunity that an Olympic team didn't tap Mr. Moringa to weave his wizardry onto their opening ceremony kits for the Paris Games. 'Fashion is something that never stops and is always moving and changing,' Mr. Moringa said, summing up his ethos. He is striding into the future. Even if there aren't many who seem to be willing to join him there. Yet. As we stepped out onto the Parisian streets, it was tough to picture someone in a digitized 'Starry Night' dress striding beside me. None of our clothes yet had LCD screens on them. What we were wearing were those grins. And maybe that was Mr. Moringa's intent all along.
