MARS ATTACKS: Fashion’s fascination with sci-fi aesthetics, which bubbled up during the fall 2024 collections, continues to play out in advertising.
To wit: Kenzo‘s latest coed campaign was shot amid the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, Spain, which might as well be another planet.
Photographer Johnny Dufort trained his camera on models rambling over the rocky terrain at El Volcancito, Charco de los Clicos and Teseguite, while Frank Lebon created a series of short films of models roaming at night across the almost Martian terrain.
According to Kenzo, its artistic director Nigo employed space travel as a metaphor for the interplay between Tokyo and Paris that he regularly explores in his designs.
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Dufort and Lebon managed to portray the “wonders of nature in their inherent sci-fi glory,” according to Kenzo.
Nigo’s latest collection for Kenzo owes a debt to George Lucas’ “Star Wars” franchise in the way the director and his costume designer took inspiration from kimonos, samurai armor and other Japanese elements, but so effectively blurred the references they didn’t telegraph any particular national dress.
The Kenzo fall fashion show paraded variations on flak vests, silvery catsuits, Jedi robes and fuzzy gloves which looked like they belong on the Millennium Falcon, but were blurred in that Lucas way.
The collection included elements from the past that seem futuristic, including a weave inspired by the wood print of a Japanese fireman’s jacket, and a miniature dot pattern that winks to 15h-century kimonos but reads as constellations in the night sky.
Even the suits based on school uniforms, like the one Nigo wore during his grade-school days in Japan, would not look out of place on the bridge of any starship.
