KENZO

Kenzo Takada (1939-2020) was the first Japanese designer to make Paris his home. Born in Hyogo, he was one of the first male students at the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, moved to Paris in 1965 with a stipend earned by winning a Soen magazine prize, and in 1970 opened his first boutique — Jungle Jap — in the Galerie Vivienne. The aesthetic was electric: floral prints, pan-Asian references, looser silhouettes that opposed the body-conscious 1970s European mainstream. Kenzo Takada retired in 1999 and sold the house to LVMH in 1993. The brand went through Antonio Marras and Humberto Leon / Carol Lim (the Opening Ceremony founders, 2011-2019) before the 2021 appointment of Nigo — the second Japanese designer to lead a French luxury house. Nigo's tenure (2021 to present) has leaned heavily on his archive instincts: the Boke Flower motif, varsity jackets, military workwear references, and a sustained collaboration with Verdy's Wasted Youth. Kenzo Takada died of COVID-19 complications in October 2020. His original Pommerie maison in Place des Victoires has been preserved and operates as the Nigo-era flagship. Few brands have had as direct a Japanese-Parisian dialogue running across half a century — Takada → Nigo as a generational pass — and the cultural significance of that lineage has not been lost on the broader luxury establishment.