Docking is a word widely used in Japanese when talking about fashion, but barely known in English. Describing the practice of combining the elements of two distinct garments to make a single item (for instance a nylon jacket with a cotton shirt, or a sneaker with a loafer), it’s a handy term that describes much of what Tatsuya Tamada does with Tamme.
Since last season Tamada has been exploring the image of his police officer father, fusing the hallmarks of authority he observed on his dad’s uniform into more casual, streetwise pieces that blur the lines between the smart and the scuzzy, the buttoned-up and the blasé. This season he dove deeper into this paternal inspiration, taking a softer approach to docking. (Sidenote: he used to work for Sacai’s Chitose Abe, who could well be described as the queen of this process).
“Take the three-panel construction of a jacket, or the standard pairing of a suit jacket and trousers with a dress shirt. I wanted to take those familiar elements and soften the finish,” he said. Tamada did this by tweaking the silhouettes, rounding out the shoulders and adjusting lengths to blur what he described as “the rigid outlines typical of uniform-style garments.”
A duo of grayish blue button-ups were layered into a single piece; a khaki sport coat mutated into a field jacket; and blazers became hoodies. Sweatpants were cut with the elegant drape and flare more commonly seen on tailored trousers. Polo shirts and zip-ups had crest-shaped cutouts on the chest, as though badges of authority had been torn away, revealing the layers of striped shirting beneath.
The result was a kind of sartorial palimpsest: a gently grungy wardrobe that still held traces of authority, hovering between conservative uniformity and individual rebellion. “It’s about peeling back existing layers,” said Tamada. “What I’m aiming for is one look, where different intentions and layers overlap to form a single, cohesive whole.”
