Last Wednesday evening, June 19, 2024, the Kenzo Spring Summer 2025 Menswear fashion show was held in Paris. The sixth signed by Nigo, creative director of the maison since 2021. The objective and main core of the show was to tell and celebrate the unique identity of the brand, a perfect mix between France and Japan, between pop culture and the historical heritage of the maison. The result saw camouflage workwear suits with bamboo leaf motifs and jackets decorated with reproductions of the Eiffel Tower but in the most authentic Japanese touch.
Among the guests, Pharrell Williams, sitting in the front row, but also the actress Juliette Binoche, and pop phenomena such as Maluma, Pusha T, French Montana and Vernon of Seventeen, who literally sent the fans into raptures. The maison has a complicated history: founded in 1970 by Kenzo Takada, Kenzo was originally known for its colorful prints and extravagant silhouettes in full “post-hippie” style; it subsequently evolved into a highly successful dailywear brand, a non-stop success that saw it as a protagonist from the 80s to the early 2000s.
In 2010, at the height of the streetwear boom, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, – founder of Opening Ceremony – were hired as creative directors, riding, or rather anticipating, the trends of the moment with skilful marketing operations, which saw their development more emblematic and concrete in the iconic tiger sweatshirt, which has become a hyper-recognizable must have of the brand.
But after the boundless hype, trends slowly began to change, as did the clientele; not even a new creative direction led by Felipe Oliveira Baptista could change things. All the collections shown on the catwalk literally went unnoticed, and Kenzo was simply recognized as the brand of sweatshirts with the tiger and logo, a perfect item especially for shady counterfeiters, who reproduced many fake copies.
Then, in 2021, Nigo arrived. As a Japanese designer with long-standing international credibility in the world of streetwear (he founded A Bathing Ape, an early streetwear staple, and co-founded the Billionaire Boys Club with Pharrell Williams), it was hoped that Nigo could simultaneously reassert the brand’s Japanese ties while reinvigorating the streetwear lines that have fueled its business today.
However, as many are claiming, streetwear is slowly losing ground compared to the past and although the collection presented at the Jardin du Palais Royal proved to be sufficiently varied and stimulating, it is probably not enough to define the new path of a brand that has already experienced countless changes of course.
So what will be the future of the fashion house? Will it abandon the street direction to travel the streets of its initial heritage or will it come across a completely new path?
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