Junichi and Chitose Abe don’t talk business at home

This designer couple behind Kolor and Sacai share household duties and weekends off, but they don’t meddle with each other’s work.

While other married couples run a business together, Junichi and Chitose Abe run their businesses separately. Junichi heads Kolor and Chitose runs Sacai. These are two Japanese fashion labels that have created a buzz in the world of ready-to-wear carried by trend-setting retailers. In fact, they have more stores which have come knocking on their doors than they want to handle.

The couple met 25 years ago, working in the atelier of Rei Kawakubo, the iconic founder of Comme des Garçons.

Husband and wife live together and raise their daughter in a home in Tokyo, sharing household duties and weekends off.  But they don’t meddle with each other’s work. They claim not to go to each other’s shows, or compare designs.

The Kolor Men’s 2016 spring/summer show held at the Maison de la Radio was two days ahead of  the Sacai Men’s 2016 show at the Bourse de Commerce, both in Paris.

Junichi, an experienced pattern maker, has been exposed to fashion for 26 years and claims that he is inspired from within, that ideas are “from emotions that come up unconsciously.” His designs present extraordinary craftsmanship, different fabric textures sewn together.

With Kolor, which is now 10 years old, he maintains that “fabric is one of the key factors to express what I feel and the image I have in mind. It has to be the right material for the right shape and cut.” There were androgynous, oversized parkas and anoraks, jackets with exposed stitching, huge pants, rugged footwear.

Chitose Abe, on the other hand, calls her spring theme “a new hybrid form, free from its original meaning.” She presented a mixture of her usual textures, but gave different perspectives to time and gender. She is inspired by Tokyo’s contradictions: Top luxury fashion brands co-exist with wacky shops; techie buildings are beside Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. “There’s such a variety of things interlaced with each other and I think that is interesting.”

Her show was done under the sun-lit dome of the Bourse de Commerce. The models wore plaid ponchos, fringed scarves, tropical prints, drop crotch pants, stadium jackets — using different materials and textures. She featured outfits that traveled across time and cultures, mixing outfits for global citizens.

Univers in Rockwell offers Kolor and Sacai for fashion-forward gentlemen.

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