On the catwalk, the collection began with five structured gowns but made in menswear fabrics – navy pinstripes, grey tweeds, and checked flannels. Their distorted forms made it look like they’d been put through the ringer, and soon the culprit was revealed: a sixth model with multiple dresses tacked to her front, and matching velvet gloves swathed around her hands like boxing gloves. If the opening dresses – rendered in those masculine materials – represented the failing global structures that Kawakubo spoke of, then she seemed to be suggesting it was the job of the feminine to come in and knock them from their perch.
Photography Jamie-Maree Shipton