Julius: Concept Wear On The Dark Side

Cities | Paris | 08.06.2015

We’re giving you another sneak preview and this time it is Julius, the concept collection winter 15/16 of Tatsuko Horikawa from Japan, which we are pleasantly surprised to find at one of Paris’ fashion agencies during fashion open day – a spring event in Paris to come and see the latest collections and the latest designers, usually in the beginning of April. BDMOTP is allowed to bring our own model and our photographer for a quick-shoot. And we are lucky to give you just a few pictures here which came out nicely, because this is a very special collection, one which clearly on the runway would look like dynamite, but when you are able to approach it in person it immediately grasps and seizes you because of its strong and gripping conceptual dark design.

So what is behind this foreboding sartorial marvel?

Terracotta Warriors of the Kingdom of the New Rising Sun

The Julius collections exist since 2001 in Japan and since 2006 also outside Japan, and were first appropriately launched in a modern art gallery in Tokyo – as this is no club nor lounge wear – but concept and design wear. Trying it on at the fashion agency BDMOTP popped the question as to in which town or city or which location one would be able to find someone wearing Julius. How about during Pink Floyd retro perspective concert titled ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ somewhere in an industrial park in London’s West End?

It so turns out that Tatsuko in his creations is obsessed with shades of black. Scarab. Crow. Ink. Jet. Charcoal. Asphalt. Basalt. And all the other shades of black visible in the collection Tatsuko sees as representing the spiritual colors of the Zen tradition of spirituality while equating the darkness with the feelings of a deep and unknown grief. He calls his creations both metallic and industrial and they are meant to go paired with an ambient sound or noise which would awaken in us the pilgrim – a man who must yet still chose which road he is about to take. A curious and foreboding lifestyle concept of the avant-garde of our times.

Of course this being Paris, France, all this darkness translates seamlessly and perfectly into the French tradition of noire and existentialism. Legions of books have been written about it and it is nice to be able to see such dark ideas being entered and introduced in actual form and shape as a lifestyle concept and design on the runways and in the showrooms around the planet. Indeed the Julius collection would surely qualify under the omen and nomen of dark, brooding, and existentialist. Let’s say as a lifestyle concept of something out of an ominous gnostic nightmare – something like the Wachowski brothers Matrix Reloaded, where different shades of darkness and black are necessary to portray the insidiousness of life’s brooding and often meaningless destiny – night shades not optional.

“Mr Anderson, we need to talk …”