It kicked off with a shirt and pants combo. A large piece of fabric was fastened by buttons to the shoulders and sleeves, uniquely framing the body of the model and demonstrating Okazaki’s forte when it comes to pulling off seemingly implausible designs. The choice of color—a vivid red for the whole outfit—also heightened the impact the look made as something irregular, as a slight deviation from the conventional shape of a shirt. An eerie mood suddenly spread across the venue.
The creepy sensation of having seen something weird only grew stronger as the show wore on. Stitching that seemed like zigzagging, intersecting sharp lines. Elliptic holes in the fabric that appeared to ignore the laws of design. Merciless slits that almost cut open the clothing. These designs teased glimpses of what was underneath provoked unease, as if the private was being made public. Apparent bright red droplets of blood peeking through elliptic holes further aggravated the sense of disquiet. Okazaki occasionally used images of what seemed to be doves. And yet far from mollifying as might be expected from such a symbol of peace, Okazaki’s choice to render the birds not in pure white but rather in stripes or black intensified the foreboding we felt. When a black T-shirt emblazoned with a graphic splatter of red blood appeared on the runway, the only word that came to mind to describe this collection was “madness.”
And then everything changed. The thunder and rain sound effects stopped, plunging the venue into silence, out of which we suddenly heard the cheerful chirping of song birds, which provided the accompaniment for the final outfit. By the end, the venue brimmed with luster and hope. A dark and eerie essence remained at the core of the collection and yet notwithstanding all the negative elements interlaced into the designs, the clothes strangely never looked vulgar. Rather, those elements served as striking accents that helped to bring out the inherent appeal of the designs.
Later, a short note about the collection was sent by the usually taciturn Okazaki. On it, he defined the theme of the season: madness. So the madness that we all felt at the end of the show was, indeed, completely in keeping with the designer’s intentions. But there is a thin line between true madness and purity of spirit. And surely I was not alone in sensing in that last outfit, unblemished and white as snow, signs of genuine madness lurking just beneath the surface.