Japan in the spotlight for the new exhibition by “fashion researcher” Yuima Nakazato, at the Cité de lalace in Calais

After Yves Saint Laurent last year, it is an avant-garde designer that the City of Lace and Fashion in Calais is highlighting: Yuima Nakazato. The Japanese designer develops fashion inspired by the tradition of the land of the rising sun and technological innovations. This is the first exhibition dedicated to this designer.

A sculptural outfit welcomes visitors to the City of Lace and Fashion in Calais: multicolored pleated waves, a garment that looks like it came straight from a manga or a science fiction film. This work is Atlas, from Yuima Nakazato’s spring-summer 2021 collection. For this piece, the Japanese designer did not use any sewing. He used twenty-eight pieces of an innovative textile composed of a fiber obtained from a synthetic plant protein: Brewed Protein which has the ability to shrink on contact with water at 70 degrees.

“When I discovered this material,” explains the creator, “it was still at the experimental stage. It shrank by 40% on contact with water. But I tried to transform this disadvantage into an advantage. I used special inks and prints, and I managed to master the contraction process. I discovered that it could produce three-dimensional shapes. So I don’t use any thread or needle to create these shapes. organic.”

Originally from Japan, Yuima Nakazato is an avant-garde fashion designer, born in 1985. He studied at the Antwerp Academy. In 2008, he received the innovation prize for his graduation work where he introduced origami. In 2015, he founded his own brand and participated a year later in Paris Fashion Week. He creates stage costumes for Lady Gaga and dancers from the Geneva Opera. His work oscillates between East and West, craftsmanship and technology, past and future. “His couture aims to be a research laboratory serving fashion that is more respectful of the environment, it questions the relationship between the body and society” explains Shazia Boucher, curator of the exhibition.

Until January 5, 2025, the Cité de lalace et de la mode is dedicating an exhibition to her, entitled “Beyond couture”. This is the first time that his work has been presented in this way. Around fifty silhouettes, inspired by his travels, his reflections, as well as fashion sketches and technical drawings reveal his creative journey, in a futuristic and poetic universe.

Very concerned by the fact that the fashion industry is one of the most polluting, Yuima Nakazato develops sustainable pieces, like the kimonos that were passed down from generation to generation. “Do we need to make more clothes?” he asks. For him, clothing must evolve with the body, but the use of thread and needle makes clothing static. He therefore developed a new technique: “Type-1”, a system of small numbered elements which are fixed by a type of pressure and which makes it possible to adapt the outfit to different morphologies, to replace worn parts. to extend the life of clothes.

“Historically, haute couture was more reserved for women, purely artisanal and had little concern for excess or waste. I am trying to follow another path”, he said. A path where the quality of haute couture would be at the service of the greatest number, a path where outfits are worn indifferently by men or women.

Yuima Nakazato is committed to more responsible and ethical fashion, what he calls “the standards of the future”.