Guests at Kenzo’s fall presentation ducked as they passed through a small wooden door to discover founder Kenzo Takada’s former Paris home, a transporting, Japanese-style abode tucked behind a traditional 18th-century apartment building.
The event signaled a return to the the founder’s love of traditional Japanese designs, French elegance and American vintage — and where all that syncs up with the fascinations of creative director Nigo, an epic collector of vintage Kenzo.
Over the past year, the brand took some puzzling detours with bloomers, pink bunny characters, plush tiger hoodies with tails and snow-globe platform shoes stalking Kenzo’s runways.
Now the LVMH-owned house, under a new chief executive officer and having parted ways with its previous design director, are returning to the wholesome, slightly preppy and spunky collegiate dressing that was among Nigo’s first creative volleys since his appointment in 2021.
Here were more approachable and familiar Kenzo propositions: colorful varsity jackets, kimono-inflected tailoring, elevated workwear staples, Western-style shirts and shirtdresses, and straightforward floral prints and embroideries, some colorful, others sepia-toned.
A few looks came straight from the archive, including a cute, colorful Kite bag from 1986, and a color-blocked suit Takada designed in 1991, a sketch of it displayed on a desk — and a new version in checks on the shoulders of Kenzo CEO Charlotte Coupé, who joined the house last May from Louis Vuitton.
Nigo did not give any previews, but he was in the house and the garden, snapping a video of the carps circling the pond, surrounded by bamboo and juniper, for his Instagram feed. “We are going back home, back to the beginning,” he declared in the show notes.
Kenzo plans to return to the runway next season, so consider this presentation a deep breath, a reset and a Zen placeholder for Nigo’s next chapter.
