The idea of freedom had been playing on Sayori Tanaka’s mind this season. “There are many people around the world whose freedom is being restricted in various ways, and I feel resentful and angry about that, so the collection expressed this,” the designer explained following her fall show, which was held in the vast hall of the Yoyogi National Gymnasium. A piano player gently tinkled the keys before switching to an electric keyboard, accompanied by a drummer keeping the rhythm on a cajon as the models paced down rows in the stadium.
Using feathers as a motif to represent that aforementioned sense of freedom, the collection was an exercise in Americana, with cowboy boots, paisley prints, Western shirts with arrow pockets, and tasseled skirts telling the story. Denim is Tanaka’s forte, and so it remained tonight, with highlights being a Texan tuxedo festooned with bijoux, plenty of great jeans, and a surprisingly wearable-looking denim corset.
Many of the other ideas weren’t executed with enough refinement, however, and ended up looking messy. Tanaka is a former design director at Uniqlo with further experience at Yohji Yamamoto, but beyond the denim she clearly has a knack for, her own design language still feels unclear. “Envision! Imagine Again!” read the lights on the ceiling at the end of the show.
