In terms of first impressions, the S/S 2024 collection might be summed up with the word “translucence.” Even all-black ensembles shone with a diaphanous brilliance, thanks to a complex interplay of material, streamlined silhouettes, and delicate details. Similar to last season, the collection centered around HATRA’s signature playbook of phantasmal AI-generated prints and structural silhouettes achieved through the brand’s intricate pattern-making acumen. Yet Nagami proved he has a few new tricks up his sleeve, particularly in the AI realm.

This season, HATRA collaborated with Yuma Kishi, a contemporary artist who deploys AI to create data-driven digital work. The collection’s title, “DIAPHANERA,” takes its name from a generative AI model trained by Kishi on an image library of agate and other mineraloids. The model transforms or “crystallizes” any input—for example, jacquard knits and silkscreen patterns of collections past—into abstract graphics with a geological effect. This intriguing concept was applied to plumb designs from the brand’s archive as well as new sketches by Nagami. Transcending by place and time, the resulting visuals brim with a liminal energy that injected a powerful dynamism to the runway.

AI behaves in unpredictable ways, expanding and collapsing silhouettes with a callous disregard for human logic. The experience reportedly prompted Nagami to explore new silhouettes, as evinced by this season’s perfectly symmetrical outerwear accented by large diamond and elliptical motifs that inhabit the liminal space between distortion and precision.

The nebulous border between the known and unknown, reality and artifice, can be a precarious place to sow the delicate seeds of creation. Yet if the S/S 2024 season is any indication, the liminal fruits of Nagami’s experimentation are ripe for the harvest.