Marie Redding, Senior Editor09.16.21
Sidney Toledano, chairman and CEO of the LVMH Fashion Group, has announced the appointment of Nigo as Artistic Director of Maison Kenzo.
Nigo will take the reigns on September 20th, 2021—and he will be the first Japanese designer to lead the brand since its founder Takada Kenzo retired in 1999. (Sadly, Kenzo Takada passed away from Covid-19 in 2020.)
Nigo succeeds Portuguese designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista, the New York Times reports. Baptista showed his first Kenzo collection at Paris Fashion Week in February 2020.
“I am very happy to welcome Nigo as the Artistic Director of the Maison Kenzo," Toledano says in a statement. "The arrival of an extremely talented Japanese designer will allow us to write a new page in the history of the House that Kenzo Takada founded."
Toledano continues, "I am convinced that the creativity and innovation of Nigo as well as his attachment to the history of the House will fully express all the potential of Kenzo."
Comparing Nigo to Kenzo's Founder Kenzo Takada
Nigo posted the news about his new job on Instagram, shown below, and points out a few comparisons between himself and Kenzo's OG founder.Nigo said he was born the same year that Takada opened his first store in Paris, and they both graduated from the same fashion school in Tokyo. The parallels don't end there. When Kenzo joined the LVMH group in 1993, Nigo started his career in fashion.
Nigo's statement, also on LVMH's site, continues:
"Kenzo san’s approach to creating originality was through his understanding of many different cultures. It is also the essence of my own philosophy of creativity."
"Inheriting the spirit of Kenzo san’s craftsmanship to create a new Kenzo is the greatest challenge of my 30-year career, which I intend to achieve together with the team."
Nigo's Streetwear Aesthetic
Nigo is credited with innovating and elevating streetwear, globally. He launched his first independent clothing label in Tokyo in 1993, A Bathing Ape, merging the worlds of fashion and music. He sold the company after a bad business decision, reported Hypebeast and WWD, and left the brand in 2011. He founded the label Human Made in 2010. (A Human Made shirt is shown above, right.)Nigo tells Dazed, "...the era of clothes that inspires me for Human Made represents lost technology: the machines don't exist anymore to make some of the fabrics and stitching we admire in old clothes - so working around that problem to achieve a similar feel is an interesting process."
In 2018, Virgil Abloh, artistic director for Louis Vuitton menswear since 2018, chose Nigo as his first collaborator for LV2, the brand's capsule menswear line. (A photo from this collab is shown above, left.)
Takada's spirit—and design aesthetic—is very much alive in Kenzo Parfums, especially in the innovative Flower by Kenzo bottle. We can't wait to see how Nigo might influence the perfume brand.
