Oh to brave a heatwave with the nonchalant cool of the Soshiotsuki guy.
Japanese designer Soshi Otsuki’s eagerly awaited debut at Paris Fashion Week was an object lesson in summer dressing, with a wardrobe built around slouchy suits in neutral hues, silky Henley shirts and striped cotton pajama sets.
Otsuki, riding high since winning last year’s LVMH Prize for Young Designers, stripped his signature “soft suit” jackets of their linings and paired them with baggy pleated pants, knee-length dress shorts, or pajama shorts with curved hems.
He was inspired by a teenage memory of daydreaming about a classmate’s imagined vacation in Hawaii, while he spent the summer at his grandmother’s house in Nagoya. Turns out, the other kid wasn’t leaving Japan either, so there was a tongue-in-cheek undertone to his fantasy holiday wardrobe, with its quirky double-layered shorts and knickerbocker pants.
“When you travel, you often try out outfits or colors you wouldn’t normally wear — that sense of dressing a bit more casually or unconventionally,” Otsuki explained through a translator.
The styling of the show was superlative: knotted ribbed knit neckerchiefs, pocketbooks stuck in waistbands, and a cigarette holder ring were the visual counterpoints to Michel Legrand’s groovy soundtrack from the 1969 film “La Piscine.”
Citing the melted objects of Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, Otsuki even turned wilting in the heat into an art form, with deliberately rumpled details — a dog-eared lapel here, a crinkled collar there, and open belts that appeared frozen in mid-unravel.
In the nine months since winning the LVMH Prize, he has logged a guest designer stint at menswear trade show Pitti Uomo and a collaboration with Zara. A few pieces from that high-street collection are still floating around online: catch them if you can.
