Fashion Cantata from KYOTO
Chances helped so I had an honor to go and press-cover Fashion Cantata 2014. This fashion show has its aim to promote Kyoto's Fashion Design attempting to mix and harmonize the beauty of both Japan and the West. Its unique collaboration and outstanding guests sweep through the town's talk and the media every round. This year makes its 22nd round, under the theme of "LOVE" and the direction by Hiroyuki Nakano, a visual media artist.
Here weaves a Kimono design work, with both harmony and repulsion, its subtle and intricate patterns into the audacious colors that might turn Western designers a bit timid. There emits another work its unique air of existence in spite of somewhat restrained design. One after another, each of these experimental gems of clothing evokes impressive nuance in the models' movement and expression. It then transforms the viewer's sentiments. A work after another, the process repeats, the stimulus piles, and the exaltation covers the floor, row by row.
In fact, Daigaku-Ji temple where the stage is installed, boasts nearly 1200 years of its history since Kōbō-Daishi Kūkai. The esoteric buddhism Shingon Mikkyō that Kūkai brought to Japan should have been also a proposal of an eye-popping total cultural life at that time. It is indeed in one of its central temples that this picturesque scroll of fashion unrolled in the present time -- what can you call this marvellous experience but the bliss for your eyes ?