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”

What was your experience like working at Balenciaga? Did you have any direct contact with Nicholas?

Everyday, everything I saw there was so fresh and exciting. I was assisting the knitwear designer and the women’s wear designer about half and half. I was in charge of making the rough samples and intricate details based on Nicolas’s drawings. For knitwear, I was correcting sizes of samples as they came back from factories.

When I was there we were working most of the time on the couture so I had the great fortune to see watch and learn couture techniques by the highly skilled atelier. Excellent embroidery was done by Lesage. Ever since I started watching Balanciaga, Nicolas had a strong impact on me but I did not have any contact with him while making my MA collection.

How do you work? Do you start out by gathering inspirations and work from that? Is everything done by machine?

I didn’t really need to research for the wave patterns for this collection because I based it pretty much on my what is in my mind now and in my memory of the waves of light. It depends on the theme but of course I would normally gather information and images.

All of these patterned fabrics were machine knitted at a factory in Japan, afterwards, I cut and sew them to make up the garments.
What are your dreams as a designer and is there a message that you want to pass on through your clothes?

I often imagine myself enjoying drawing patterns in a house surrounded by the sea, going fishing and diving when I felt like it.

First of all, I do not want to forget to enjoy myself making patterns, constructing shapes and then what would make me so happy is if customer could feel share that feeling and could enjoy and be made happy by my work.

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.