If you think Doublet’s only about the cutesy items and visual puns, joke’s on you. Masayuki Ino’s punchline is his keen eye for materials innovation and a knack for weaving serious topics into conversation-starter pieces.
Take his fall collection, titled “Air.”
As is the Tokyo-based designer’s wont, alongside lightly zhuzhed no-brainer staples were balloon animals as scarves and collars; pieces that looked cut from bubble wrap; a sweater with a factory emitting gray clouds; a windswept suit with leaves and newspaper sheets stuck to it, and a T-shirt professing love for Marge Dursley, the awful aunt that fictional wizard Harry Potter inflates to grotesque proportions for speaking ill of his late parents.
But the first thing he mentioned backstage before the show was a different kind of wizardry: talking about a novel yarn used in the collection and the T-shirt he was wearing.
Recently developed by Japan-based eco-material research and development firm Plaisir Co., the T-shirt was made from CO2 captured from the air. The resulting fabric has a hand somewhere between heavy cotton and linen and was used for several other items in the lineup, including suits.
Still in the early stages, it’s rather a tricky material to produce clothing with, but the designer feels it’s worth a go. He also used a dye derived from exhaust fumes.
“Our brand is not as big as others but it’s important that we use this kind of newly invented material,” he said through a translator. “It’s good that people know about it. Perhaps more will use it so we can help improve the environment.”
And showcasing it in wonderfully wacky ways is a way to make it memorable, he added. “Talking about heavy subjects directly might be too much but [make it] more light and you remember it really well.” Talk about an inspiration.
