The big reveal is still months away—we’ll see it IRL around the time the U.S. elects its next president—but H&M has shared three looks from its upcoming Kenzo collaboration with Vogue.com today. Given Kenzo Takada’s penchant for clashing patterns and textures and current creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon’s own lively work at the label, the lineup is plenty colorful. In fact, the tiger stripes that figure in all of these images are based on archival prints. “Lots of customers only know the side of Kenzo we worked on,” said Leon by phone from Malibu, where he’s vacationing with his family. “But we’re celebrating the brand’s 50th anniversary. We’ve kept Kenzo Takada close to our hearts; he comes to all our shows. We want to do something that makes him feel proud.”
That extends beyond the vibe of the clothes. Takada, like Lim and Leon after him, was an outsider in Paris. He arrived in the mid-’60s, around the time that Yves Saint Laurent was shaking up the old-school haute couture system with his Rive Gauche ready-to-wear. The Japanese-born designer presented his own version of streetwear, and made a point of putting on runway shows that reflected real life. Inclusivity and individuality were guiding principles in the Kenzo collections of the 1970s. Riffing on that concept for the H&M collaboration lookbook, rather than casting professional models, Leon and Lim have recruited friends and influencers: “People we admire, icons in their own fields, people who are influential beyond their fashion sensibility,” said Leon. Pictured here are Amy Sall, an activist and founder of SUNU: Journal of African Affairs, Critical Thought + Aesthetics, and artist and poet Juliana Huxtable; Oko Ebombo, a music and performance artist; and Isamaya Ffrench, a makeup artist and member of the London-based collective Theo Adams Company.
“This is just the beginning,” said Leon of the lookbook stars. “We really put our heart and soul into how it will look. We just love what they do.”
looking forward to the rest...
