Gianni Versace, Yohji Yamamoto. Dries Van Noten, Rei Kawakubo, Giorgio Armani. This Engineered Garments collection sees Daiki Suzuki pay homage to the designers who inspired the formative years of his career back in the ’80s, all in his signature magpie aesthetic.
A collage of two tones of paisley shirting together in one style feels reminiscent of Van Noten’s knack for print mashups, and an eclectic geometric repeat pattern nods at Versace’s playful yet alluring sensibility. There’s funky jacquards, iridescent twills, and a couple of great wool suitings. The impressive assortment of fabrics here paint a great picture, but they don’t tell the full story.
More compelling are Suzuki’s novel and meticulously err…engineered tailoring inventions. A tailored jacket is bisected at the torso and partitioned around the neck by a couple of zippers. The result allows the wearer to unzip the collar and shift it sideways, as it is worn in this lookbook, in a way that recalls Yamamoto’s brilliant and often puzzling tailoring experiments. Another tailored style comes with a pair of lapels—one peak and one shawl—that unbutton at the facing and are interchangeable. One could presumably wear the two, in the spirit of Kawakubo’s Frankenstein-esque fabrications, or not. That these pieces contain both the complexity of the work of Suzuki’s muses and the straightforward pragmatism of his own is the true achievement of this collection.
