Yuima Nakazato Couture FW24 at Paris Couture Week

Yuima Nakazato Couture FW24 / Fall Winter 2024-2025 at Paris Couture Week

Designer’s message

Following on from our previous season, this latest collection (Yuima Nakazato Couture FW24) took its initial inspiration from my experiences designing stage costumes for Idomeneo, an opera written by Mozart that explores war and relationships in ancient Greece.

The story, which takes place on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea, is told using a stage design that incorporates an abundance of red ropes.

The scenes of armored figures, entangled in red ropes representing the sea, seemed to hint at multiple meanings, bringing me face to face with the unchanging nature of the human condition as it has stood from ancient times to the modern day.

The steel armor from the original opera is represented in Yuima Nakazato Couture Fall Winter 2024-2025 collection by delicate and fragile ceramics, used in dresses that create sound through the movement of the body, almost like a culture musical instrument. The resulting pieces resemble a sort of armor that lacks any usefulness in combat. I also chose to include tailored suits as a modern callback to armor, superimposing our own age onto that of the ancient Greeks of over 5,000 years ago.

As if losing their original function, the suits crumble, drape, and turn inside out, transforming into ornaments for the body. From within, a lining of delicate, hand-knitted red thread begins to emerge.

Red, the color that flows through each of our veins, looms forth from the black suits. My intention was to turn the very state of being clothed into something that exposes the individual even more than wearing no clothing at all.

During combat, the most important feature of an item worn on the body is its functionality, which is as true now as it was in ancient times. Functionality also serves as an important factor in evaluating the design of a given garment in the mass production-based apparel industry. By removing the garments’ functionality and making them purely decorative—inverting the original meaning of clothing—I sought to express my resistance to this trend.

Yuima Nakazato

Details of Yuima Nakazato Couture FW24 / Fall Winter 2024-2025

Each piece of ceramic used in the collection was made with Japanese clay and shaped by myself and atelier members’ own hands. Combined with hand-knitted dresses, corsets, and belts made in our atelier, I have created a delicate, decorative armor. These were worn by dancers led by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, with the resulting movement and sound being utilized as part of the stage setting.

The tailored suits are made with Spiber’s Brewed Protein™ fibers and wool woven into fabric on traditional looms at a Japanese weaver which has been in operation for more than 100 years.

The lining is either hand-knitted or silk organdy woven with non-twisted fibers. Prints were made using digital textile printing technology with pigmented inks, minimizing both water and energy consumption.

The shirts are made of fabrics woven from Brewed Protein™ fibers and organic cotton, while the decorations are made of silk and cotton lace produced in Caudry.

With Dry Fiber Technology, which we have been researching and developing with Epson over several seasons, we seek to recycle scraps generated during fiber production in Japan. Separating these scraps by color and material allows us to control the look and feel of the resulting fabric, which is then made into dresses and jackets.

Finally, MIKIMOTO’s black pearl jewelry and hand knitwear are used in the styling to complement the story of Idomeneo, which is set against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea.