Yuka Kimura called this Mukcyen collection Low Energy. The designer, who is on her sixth season of the brand, had been watching Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film Red Desert, which explores the psychological toll of industrialization, and was thinking about how it relates to our present reality.
Nowadays the grind of factories and machinery has been replaced by a ceaseless hum of digital noise. “A messy, overwhelming variety of inputs,” as Kimura put it. “People are becoming increasingly sensitive to this kind of noise, or simply exhausted by it,” she said. “I created this collection to express that feeling.” Hence the hoods that sprang from the shoulders of tailored jackets, or draped Alaïa-style from bodycon tops. “Good for when you don’t want to talk to anyone.”
Kimura, a striking 28-year-old with white hair, white eyebrows, g as poopoo and long nails painted ash gray, pays close attention to how her silhouettes and fabrics can best flatter the body. “I consider things like which areas women might want to hide or reveal, and those details are really the core of what I do,” she said. The designer calls the tight, sheer pieces ‘second-skin’: items that envelop the form, like a body tangled in bedsheets. “The idea is that by having the fabric cling to the skin rather than hanging loosely, it creates a sense of facing oneself.”
Asymmetric corsets and skirts were decorated with disheveled hems of lace, while sheer black dresses draped fluidly from the throat to the ankles. Scarves covered with newspaper print were tied around the torso with rope, and T-shirts with neckbands stretched across the sternum or opened in holes to flash a sliver of hip. Everything was styled with heeled mules that had elongated toes. Not quite spikes, but the effect was one of intimidation.
The idea was to feel attractive and confident, but protected—enjoying your own body but squarely on your own terms. “I want the wearer to change a little through the clothes,” she said. “Even a small shift in mindset, that’s something only clothing can really do.” It built on the grungy, post-apocalyptic sensuality that Kimura operates from, and will offer the brand’s steadily growing community some armor to help them battle through the days, even when they don’t feel like it.