New Directions
K- pop star Vernon, a member of the band Seventeen and a newly crowned Kenzo ambassador, wears the baggiest jeans imaginable in the brand's fall campaign.
The spots continue the collection's theme of building bridges between east and west. The French brand's latest designs by its Japanese creative director Nigo were captured by photographer Keizo Kitajimi in various locations.
The crisp images — somewhere between streetstyle photography, reportage and a fashion shoot — showcase the "personal universe" of Nigo and portray the historic elements and contemporary street culture that shaped the designer, according to Kenzo.
One can imagine diehard Nigo fans and serious Kenzo-philes scoping out some of the venues in the way Asian fans have been flocking to the Swiss village of Iseltwald, a pivotal European location in the popular South Korean series "Crash Landing on You."
An accompanying one- minute film by British photographer Frank Lebon, with sped- up footage in various venues, certainly elicits an itch to visit Japan. Blink- and-you- missed- it scenes include Nigo playing a game of Shogi, and Vernon brushing his teeth and tugging on socks.
Kenzo also describes the campaign as "a metropolitan dialogue between tradition and the underground" and "a study of the present- day youth scenes of the two Japanese cities."
Nigo has made the interplay between late Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada and the
French capital a central theme of his Kenzo.
His spring 2024 collection, for which he upped the Parisian sophistication, was paraded last June on a pedestrian bridge that spans the Seine River and connects the Palais de Tokyo and the Eiffel Tower. A repeat show in Shanghai last month took place by the banks of the Huangpu River.