Yuima Nakazato SS25 Couture at Paris Fashion Week Couture

Yuima Nakazato SS25 / Spring Summer 2025 Couture at Paris Fashion Week Couture entitled Fade

Narrative and Poems Yuima Nakazato SS25 / Spring Summer 2025 :

This place, it is said, was the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago. I traveled to Sahara el Beyda, a white desert at a corner of the vast Sahara. To think about the faraway memories that dwell in this planet.

In the expanse of geometrical urban landscapes, I stand atop the sight of rocks that take the shape of giant mushrooms. Memories, dreams, reveries, and the real world fuse. I become unsure of which reality I’m in.

When the sun sets, the White Desert transforms in an instant. In darkness, the land of sand shifts into the shape of waves with gusts of wind, as if it was turning into liquid. A giant creature is underground – once emerged, this became a persistent thought that refuses to leave my mind.

The long night ends, and the Sun starts to rise again. Here, is the Tokyo from the future.

Words by Yuima Nakazato

Yuima Nakazato presented its latest SS25 couture collection, ‘FADE’. The collection ushers in a new era for YUIMA NAKAZATO, one in which the focus has shifted from technical aspects, such as the use of cutting-edge materials, towards storytelling, extending an invitation to another world. Yuima travels to a different region of the world to find inspiration for each collection. The route he chose this time was the White Desert National Park, known as “Sahara el Beyda”, located in the eastern part of the Sahara Desert, which once was the bottom of the sea. Standing in the midst of a large white chalk rock formation, created through tens of millions of years of erosion by wind and sand, Yuima witnessed a story of time spanning at a cosmic scale, beyond the lifespan of any one individual person.

During the journey, his car lost its way in the desert in the middle of the night and continued to drive for hours without any signal or GPS. After being shaken for so long in the backseat and covered in dust that had seeped in through the gaps, Yuima’s sentience leapt into an endless world of imagination. There, the ancient Japanese myth of the giant creature “Namazu” (catfish) that lives under the earth and was believed to be the cause of earthquakes came to his mind.

The title of the work, “FADE”, means weathering. It is a word that describes the gradual disappearance of something, such as memories or materials. While lost in the desert, as all of his memories, visions, and reality disappeared and reappeared before his eyes, melting into one, it crossed Yuima’s mind that the desert might be foreshadowing the future of Tokyo. Seeing How today’s climate change fades and sometimes completely transforms our everyday environment, perhaps it would not be entirely fair to say that this is merely a flight of fancy.

Technical notes on the production of Yuima Nakazato SS25 / Spring Summer 2025 Couture, this season attempts to visually express a story photographed by Nakazato at the Sahara Desert in the form of clothing. For the technical aspects, we pursued possibilities of expression while reducing environmental impact by using a range of diverse techniques, embracing both tradition and new technologies: weaving on vintage looms originating from Japanese Kimono production; using unique textile designs that combine traditional Japanese handicrafts, such as lacquer, with cutting-edge materials including Brewed Protein™ fibers developed by Spiber Inc.; and digital printing technology together with AI photo processing technology.

DFT to regenerate used clothing brought back from Africa has finally reached a technical milestone after three years. Last but not least, the atelier’s handcrafting work took longer than any previous collection, further developing this craftsmanship that serves as a symbol of our brand. Making each crochet piece took an average of 500 hours, and the symbolic all-ceramic golden dress took no less than 1,000 hours to complete, with over 2,000 ceramic pieces all crafted, glazed, and threaded with beadings by hand, one by one.

Designer profile, Yuima Nakazato born in 1985. Graduated from the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium in 2008. In July 2016, he was selected as one of the official guest designers for Haute Couture Week. To this day, he continues to be its only member from Japan.

In 2024, Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode in Calais, France presented the brand’s first monographic exhibition, “YUIMA NAKAZATO Beyond Couture”. Since 2022, Nakazato began collaborating with choreographers and theatre directors to design costumes for operas and ballet productions in both the US and Europe, including the Boston Ballet and the Geneva National Theatre. Nakazato is also a founder of the FASHION FRONTIER PROGRAM, an educational program for emerging talent on social responsibility and environmental issues in fashion design.