With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting a dampener on Paris Fashion Week, the fashion world was rocked on Sunday by the death of Kenzo Takada. The founder of Kenzo fashion house, famous for his oversize designs and cross-cultural inspirations which made bold use of floral and ethnic prints, led a Japanese revolution in the French fashion industry.
Against the wishes of his family, Kenzo had switched studies to become one of the first male students to enroll at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo. In 1961, his designs won the Soen Prize, awarded by the prestigious women’s magazine, and in 1964, compensation he received for the demolition of his apartment ahead of the Tokyo Olympics allowed him to travel to Paris.
Kenzo sold sketches and worked briefly as a stylist until in 1970, he managed to acquire space in the Galerie Vivienne. Creating a collection largely out of cotton, painting the walls in wild florals inspired by Henri Rousseau, Kenzo opened his first boutique, which he named Jungle Jap. Soon his exuberant designs splashed on the cover of Elle and inside the pages of Vogue.
From loosely structured trousers and tunics, youthful waistcoats and dungarees, and capacious dresses with wide armholes and billowing shoulders to knit throws and silk shawls styled around folk themes, Kenzo proved popular among the fashionistas of Paris. By 1976 he had opened his flagship store in the Place des Victoires. Revolutionising the fashion show with a penchant for theatrics and models who bounced and twirled down the catwalk, in 1978 and 1979 Kenzo held shows inside a circus tent, with the designer himself riding an elephant.
In the eighties Kenzo launched menswear and jeans lines and branched out into fragrances. In 1984 he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Then in 1993, Kenzo sold his company to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, remaining as the creative director until 1999, when after thirty years at the helm he took a step back from the world of fashion.
Kenzo subsequently designed costumes for the opera and the uniforms for the Japanese team at the 2004 Olympics, before turning his hand to homeware and furniture collections. In 1999 he was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon by Japan, and in 2016 he was elevated to Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Kenzo died on Sunday at the age of 81, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine from complications after contracting coronavirus.
