Japanese boxer turned designer Arashi Yanagawa, whose label pays homage to the heavyweight champion John Lawrence Sullivan, went bold and bright for his Autumn / Winter 2013 collection. Too bad most of the fight was between patterns that clashed and proportions that sometimes struggled to find balance. Aggressive prints approached gaudy with ill-fitted pairings of retro floral and Scottish tartan. An attempt at tribal spirit was lost in translation with geometric designs that read more Atari than Africa. Yanagawa found more success in toying with combinations of British and Japanese sartorial aesthetics like his reinvention of traditional hakama pants as cropped slacks.
When certain couplings failed to synthesise, the collection’s cohesion continued through colour. Brightening a winter palette of dark browns and blues, ‘70s orange served as a mainstay rather than an accent. A touch of dandyism ran through the collection, modernised by metallics.
Dacy Knight
