By now, showgoers are familiar with rising fandom, given the crush of screaming tweens hoisting balloons and signs outside of many runway venues, often awaiting their favorite K-pop stars.
Doublet designer Masayuki Ino sent up the phenomenon at his spring show, complete with colorful banners creating a gauntlet for the models as they stormed through a school courtyard; Japanese paper fans decorated with hearts and inscrutable slogans handed to select editors, and clothes and accessories that variously expressed devotion to cheerleading, anime and next-generation materials like Spiber, which is made of brewed protein.
Ino has a gift for wry slogans, splashing “Your Only Fans” on a cropped football jersey, “I (Heart) Protein Fiber” on a T-shirt, or “Cheerleader” inside the blood-red hood of a varsity jacket, visible only when the multi-zip hood, recalling the Demogorgon monsters in “Stranger Things,” is splayed over the shoulder blades.
He opened his display with leather pants and handsome overcoats with military airs that eagle-eyed observers pegged as the kind worn by male cheering squads in Japan.
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There was a wealth of terrific leather jackets and technical outerwear in shapes and colors you might find in music videos from the ’80s, and fun accessories, including canvas sneakers with spiked rubber outsoles and clutch bags resembling Christmas tinsel, or pom-poms.
The display reached a zenith with pilled and tattered V-neck sweaters scrawled with a phrase that summed up the phenomenon: “I’m Obsessed.”
