Ryunosuke Okazaki is doing it all the wrong way around. Starting on September 13, the 30-year-old designer will have a month-long exhibition dedicated to his work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Usually designers have to wait until they’re dead for that kind of honor. And here’s the real kicker: Okazaki has never sold a single item of ready-to-wear clothing.
Like Rorschach prints made fashion, his works are created through a process the designer likens to prayer, and are inspired by the animistic spirituality of Japan’s peaceful Jomon period, notably its pottery. The V&A showcase, called JOMONJOMON, marks the designer’s European debut, but not his global one: one of Okazaki’s dresses was chosen for the Met Museum’s “Sleeping Beauties” exhibition last year, and he has held exhibits of his work in Hong Kong and Beijing.
This latest collection, which is his largest yet at 29 looks, and his first in over a year, marks a turning point. To explain the evolution, Okazaki held a special walkthrough at his home in Tokyo, where he had prepared a small army of mannequins that looked like cosmic gods. Great curves swept over the human forms in gold, mint, and black. Other pieces were cherry blossom pink, ending in two curved points that crossed over at the feet, or expanding from the body like a flower or an alien exoskeleton.
Where Okazaki’s dresses thus far have been mostly made of linear structures, this time there were more fabrics and draping, nudging his work gently into the direction of genuine wearability. “I’ve been thinking about doing ready-to-wear for a while, and I’m finally making progress on that,” he said. The collection also includes his first ever accessories: Vibram-soled Chelsea boots decorated with undulations of faux leather at the sides, and black and burgundy handbags that curve into smiling sculptures. He is currently working on an e-comm site to make them available to buy. And though he has previously resisted fashion’s traditional show schedule (this collection is officially titled 004, not SS26), Okazaki also said he intends to begin making seasonal collections.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, the designer’s hometown. “I think it’s a good time for people all over the world to think about what happened there. I hope [my work] will give people a chance to think, even if just a little, and I think it’s important that we continue to assert that war is pointless.”
Gathered in Okazaki’s sunlit living room, his creations took on a celestial presence, as though a council of wise and ancient beings from a more enlightened time had descended to earth to hold court. “I intend them to evoke a sense of the power of life,” he said. They are powerful works that will rightly be committed to fashion’s history books; in the meantime they carry a message that deserves to be shown far and wide. Can a bunch of strange-looking dresses really inspire hope for humanity? Of course they can. Go and see for yourself at the V&A next month.