SHINICHIRO ARAKAWA

PEOPLEText: Takuya Minee

Shinichiro Arakawa has been developing his collections with innovative ideas and approaches (such as collaborations with Honda and Jenny) since he went to France alone in 1989. He made his first appearance in the ’93 Paris Collection.

In this year’s collection held in Paris this March, he showed an installation of wearable clothes in the style of a wall-hanging picture. This collection, which got into the domestic and foreign news, was held in Japan, and then went on tour in some galleries in Europe.

Shift visited this collection in Sapporo and interviewed him about the scene in Paris and his future developments.


2000 A/W PARIS COLLECTION

Please tell us about this collection.

There’s no reality for me in the usual walking show. There’s no people actually walking with such a catwalk style. So I wanted to do in a form that allows us to communicate with people who will actually wear the clothes.

The concept of clothes itself is wearable as clothes in the form like a picture, and the clothes themselves are really simple such as the ordinary shirt or jeans. I wanted to look at clothes we’re wearing everyday again by showing the popular items in complicated form like a picture, and rethink communication in ordinary clothes.

I’ve thought how people feel when they saw these clothes as important. I believe this is a sort of communication between creator and audience, communication with myself.


2000 A/W PARIS COLLECTION

In addition to the communication part, do you have a point of contact between art and fashion in mind?

I think art is more pure thing. What I’m doing is to produce, commercialize and sell. It’s totally business, not art. All processes are over when they’re completed as clothes. I don’t feel I pursue it by myself after the process, so I cannot say it’s art.


HONDA SHOW © Shinichiro Arakawa

You’ve gone through various collaborations with such as Honda and Jenny, are you working for such collaborations intentionally?

Collaboration is not an intentional thing for me, but I’m interested in various things so I want to do cultural collaborations in various fields not limited to one category.

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