SHADOW PLAY
Text by Caroline Issa
The Autumn/Winter Mame Kurogouchi collection is an on-the-record statement of human ingenuity, the final triumph of fantasy-to-reality challenges, and creative intent. Produced over the global lockdown last winter, and presented in February 2021, the collection translates light into fabric. Designer Maiko Kurogouchi – whose nickname is Mame – set up her label in 2010, but didn’t begin showing to a global audience in Paris until 2019, which is when we late-adopters discovered the delicacy and near-perfection of her thoroughly considered clothes.
Over the winter last year, Kurogouchi found herself photographing shadows from her bedroom windows, the sun and moonlight at different periods making graphic pattern plays across her walls. She shot the tiny red flowers littering the pavement in the rain on her daily walks. As is her custom for the last few years, she filled up lined notebooks with the photographed images that speak to her, many of which later become the basis of her collection prints. “The idea of the fragments and memory inspires the collections every time,” she says. “These pieces become one fragment and it transcends time. I realised that each page in my notebook was different but became one story. I feel a sense of happiness when I see how they’ve become clothes. As much as possible, I want to tell the story of how these drawings and photos were transformed into clothes. The medium of clothes is my priority.”
For an earlier collection, Kurogouchi had worked with the oldest and only factory in Kyoto (and in fact, the world) to use a traditional starch technique to create marble prints. After manipulating her collected shadows into swirling, marbling patterns, she returned to the factory to make her fabrics for Autumn/Winter 2021. The technique essentially uses coloured starches that are layered by hand, before being rolled into a flat patty that is wrung through an old-fashioned press to roll the print onto the textile. Only the master artisan knows how the final marble pattern will come out. Forget our notions of sploshing oil paints in water and cutting through the colours to make a swirling pattern, this painstaking artisan craft requires trust and expert knowledge to deliver its beauty. For Kurogouchi, the result is key, an attitude essential when working with the most traditional of craft partners: “Rather than thinking about the length of time a technique takes, what’s important for me is how to realise what I have in my mind.”
I want to tell the story of how these drawings and photos were transformed into clothes. The medium of clothes is my priority
