“It’s not as neat as it could be: I’m embracing the rough edges. I don’t like it to be too finished. Because everything in the fashion world is very finished.” Or is it? Iniye Tokyo James is making really interesting work of a provenance we don’t often see here in Milan. He’s fully independent (just one good reason for embracing rough edges), and his punkish, Westwood-influenced approach and Nigerian heritage combine in sometimes fascinating ways.
There is a lot of leather craft in fashion to see in this city—Tods and Bottega Veneta being paramount examples—but the crochet hats, bags and clothing adornments woven from string leather in this collection had a raw, jaunty, and hand-touched aspect that was especially appealing. Another attractive exploration of apparent roughness were the off-white to gray-green garment dyed jersey pieces that had been cut in two layers stitched together and then carefully torn apart.
James considers the sound as well as the look of his garments. A pair of patched, heavy leather pants featured grommet openings designed to swish with movement. Another pair of pants had panels of wooden beads on each leg. “So they hear you when you’re coming to church,” the designer said. The trousers and tops made of hand-applied panels of off-white red-piped organdy looked as if their anemone-shivers should have generated at least a gentle swoosh as they passed, but they remained as silent as they were visually striking.
Separates in Nigerian lace, leopard print, a blanket-striped wool, and denim were all spiked by details of handsome oddness. An embroidered sheer black dress tufted with scarlet swatches of silky fabric featured an asymmetrically leaning leather girdle. Leaning into the chaos is paying creative dividends for this designer.
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