La Foret, the legendary teeny-bopper mall in the heart of Harajuku, provided an apt stage for Mikio Sakabe to show a collection about hunting for a source of fantasy. Japan’s gravure magazines—vaguely erotic, male-marketed publications that feature bambi-eyed models posing in lingerie, swimwear, or cosplay—served as his left-field starting point for a collection he envisioned as a “swimsuit show held in a shopping mall.”
“There’s something interesting about the concept of a fashion show in a Japanese fashion mall. It feels bright and showy but it’s also a little sad,” he said. The runway was intentionally littered with discarded coffee cups and drink cans to make the point. Alternating with straight-up bikinis, models came out dressed in Sakabe’s trademark deconstructed oversized tailoring and shirting that was slashed and layered in chaotic shapes, some festooned with frills or given floppy appendages that looked like bunny ears.
All of them wore the eye-obscuring, helmet-like wigs that Sakabe has made his signature for the past few seasons (“somehow I really like them,” he said). Also uniting them were their bubble-soled sneakers from Sakabe’s smash hit footwear project Grounds—founded in 2019, it now employs around 100 people globally.
Sakabe, who was a classmate of Demna at Antwerp, is an expert at mining the depths of underground culture and twisting it into sometimes ironic fashion that is still desirable (he has swathes of fans across Asia). Like much of Sakabe’s work, this collection was about the desire to escape from reality, and the futility of trying to do so: the hyperreal superficiality of gravure, contrasted with the banal context of a shopping mall. The last look, a half-worn shirtdress, brought the idea into focus: decorated with slits of silver, they appeared like portals to another universe.
