photos by Satoshi Minakawa

We instantly fell for the designs pictured above when they hit our mailbox. We searched the designer and discovered an interview with the Central Saint Martin’s designer Sachio Kawasaki on Shaded View of Fashion.

We picked our favorite excerpts below.

Tell us about your history and design inspiration

I was born in Fukuoka, southern part of Japan, in 1982. I had an interest in fashion since I was little. When I was 12 years old, I started buying second hand clothes from Europe, stocked in one of the most fashionable shops at that time in my home town. At the age of 17, I embarked on an art and design course, and came to London at 20. I then went on to study textile design to learn the importance in the connection between fabric and shape. During the course I worked as knitwear designer assistant at Balenciaga in Paris. Then after finishing the course in 2006, I went straight on to do a MA degree at Central Saint Martins to put all the skills I has learnt together. The MA collection is entitled “Wave of Light” and is all made of Jacquard knitted fabric with printed tights.

When I visited Paris, Milan and Barcelona, I got inspired from various kinds of lights in cathedral and church coming from the outside. There I found sacred, magnificent mood in curved decorative ornaments from medieval period and that made me feeling exceptional. Then I tracked back to fined out the reason why I naturally attracted such things, I realized that it all coming from the memory of my childhood. I recalls the days always enjoyed playing with water in the river near my house, there I saw the continuously flowing, waving lights reflection on the water.

There is a concept I wanted to express through this collection.

I wanted to make something like 3-D version of fine art painting by matching 3-D elements of ’shape’ and 2-D elements of ‘pattern’ in a suitable way, not taking both elements separately and combine in the end.

In this way, I believe that the ‘Shape’ will have a strong reason to be that particular shape convinced by the ‘Pattern’ exclusively designed for it.

I just started this approach and I wish to continue searching this matching of ’shape and pattern as a whole’ more deeply to grow it as my signature style”

The sexy raspy voiced gypsy from A Shaded View of Fashion is curating a film festival. You know all you indies out there who get hard for the newest issues of Fantastic Man and V want to submit, so get ready to film some fun fashion movies.

I think I might actually work on one based around my life shot directly from the perspective of my belt buckle. Exciting, no?

I don’t get why this is such a huge medium for fashion right now. This is probably the third fashion film festival I’ve heard about this month. Can we think of other things to fuse fashion with or are we all out of ideas?

I’d suggest fashion and food. There’s one that’s not done enough.