Kenzo Takada, the Japanese designer of Flower Power, died: the death occurred today due to Covid. He was 81 years old. "He passed away on Sunday, October 4, 2020 at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine," a spokesperson announced in a statement. Kenzo was the first Japanese designer to settle in Paris, where he developed his entire career reaching international fame. Kenzo was the first Japanese designer to move to the French capital, soon climbing the ranking of international designers.
Kenzo, the first Japanese designer in Paris
His parades in 1978 and 1979 in a circus tent were epic and ended with the final entry on the scene on the back of an elephant. Irony was also one of his figures.
Since 1983 she has also been dressing men and a few years later she also signs highly successful perfumes including the famous Flower.
Paris immediately loved the Japanese designer Kenzo Takada, who became the master of Flower Power in the seventies, the floral prints that the designer mixed in an explosion of colors with camouflage patterns. A love born since 1965, the year in which the young Kenzo, fifth of seven children, born in 1939 in the Japanese prefecture of Hyogo, decided to settle in the Ville Lumiere, after graduating from the Bunka Gakuen fashion school, in Tokyo, which it had just opened to men. Paris bewitched by the colorful magic of Kenzo, had immediately opened the doors of the fashion shows to him, the first Japanese designer to conquer the Parisian catwalks, at a time when the names on the calendar were Pierre Cardin, Dior, Chanel.
The beginning of Kenzo's official career is in 1970, the year in which he presents his first collection in the Galerie Vivienne, but not before having collaborated with the French maison Feraud and with the magazine Jardin des modes. Thanks to the success achieved, Kenzo will be able to open its first Jungle Jap boutique. Shortly thereafter, a model dressed in Kenzo will appear on the cover of Elle. In 1971 his collections are presented in New York and Tokyo and the following year the designer will obtain the coveted Fashion Editor Club of Japan award. The peak of success is in the seventies.
At the same time, the eclectic Kenzo creates costumes for theater and cinema, in particular for Rive après Rive in 1980. In 1977 he launched a line for children. In 1983 a men's clothing line arrives and since 1998 he signs a license for perfumes. The most successful fragrance is undoubtedly Flower by Kenzo, launched in 2000. Since 2001, body care products have been followed under the Kenzoki brand. But the brand no longer belongs to the designer who sold it in 1993 to the French luxury group LVMH, remaining creative director until 1999, replaced by the Scandinavian designer R.Kreiberg. Kenzo announces his retirement from the fashion scene the same year he leaves the creative direction of the brand he founded. In 2002 he will reappear on the scene as an interior designer, launching a line of furnishing accessories and furniture. Currently at the creative lead of the maison is the Portuguese designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista, creative director of Kenzo since 2019, who succeeded the duo Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. In his last show in Paris a few days ago, the mosquito net hats starred in the new SS 2021 women's and men's collection.
An omen, or perhaps just a form of reminder to protect oneself from the virus even with clothing. But the designer must have thought of an alternative to masks, which have become essential for the survival of mankind in the era of a pandemic. Of course, his wide-brimmed hats, from which the tulle started up to even cover the legs, if they do not have the protective efficacy of the surgical masks virus, will still create social distancing and will be an excellent barrier against boring mosquitoes. . «I have never started a collection with so many questions in front of me - wrote the designer in describing the sensations that had inspired him, while Kenzo Takada struggled with the disease in hospital - and so many conflicting feelings about the present and the future. Surely no one can expect linear responses to the current situation. The world is lost and everyone must try to find some sort of meaning (and possible order) in it. How can we define and try to give answers to a reality that nobody fully understands or understands? How can conclusions be drawn from a situation that is far from over and whose consequences are impossible to predict? The world is sick, the world is bleeding, but it's still alive. And as long as there is life there is hope. An optimistic response must come with some degree of pragmatism. So how do we proceed from this point? How do we turn the page? How can we help people? Make her dream? Give her hope and at the same time lighten her life ».
THE LAST SHOW OF HIS MAISON
The Portuguese designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista, creative director of Kenzo since 2019, who succeeded the duo Carol Lim and Humberto Leon at the helm of the maison that since 1993 has been headed by the French luxury giant LVMH, in creating the hat-mosquito nets protagonists of the new SS 2021 collection woman and man, who walked today in Paris in the garden of the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, in the rain, must not have intentionally thought of an alternative to masks, which have become essential for the survival of mankind in the pandemic era. Sure, his wide-brimmed hats, from which he started
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