Masu AW24

I wasn't expecting to get into a fight with a photographer at a show. But there I was, waiting for all the attendees to arrive and getting yelled at by a photographer who insisted that I was going to block his shot. After an exchange of me yelling at him in English and him yelling back at me in French we somehow understood each other and cooled down in the frigid venue, just in time for the show to start. That is the beauty of Fashion Week. It is multicultural, multilingual and there is always respect for the show.

Tokyo based designer Shinpei Goto sees the beauty in everyday things like leftover cake and water droplets on a spider web after the rain. Goto sees angel wings in the flapping wings of a bat, he consistently directs warmth and light towards his perceptions. Goto explains that he is interested in ordinary sensations that people usually keep to themselves, "Maybe a child would say those true feelings innocently. I would too." says Goto with a laugh.

In his AW24 collection, the "dark heroes" envisioned by Goto are wandering. They are brought to life by the idea of the bat's contrasting existence of sharpness and roundness, apparent coldness but also carrying an underlying theme of beauty and empathy. There are many contrasts of delicacy and resilience in this collection. Black leather and satin contrast each other against a backdrop of spider web print pants and kilts. The reversed scalloped edges resembled the wings of a bat and the theme is repeated throughout hem lines and in the short capelets of the unattached hoods. Water droplets and slickness are represented through leather and rhinestone encrusted fabric as well as through the shimmering knits. Each look is a mixture of textures, a play of opposing forces. Like those found in nature.

What was the most surprising to me in this collection was the amount of enigmatic beauty that was in it. I expected to see a menswear collection that's full of very hard themes but this proved the idea that solitude and beauty are not contradictory themes. This sort of clash produced a very dramatic, yet lovely collection. A bit haunting, really.