FADE: Yuima Nakazato and the evocation of a future in mutation
In a world where fashion intertwines with memory and time, Yuima Nakazato immerses us in a narrative that challenges the boundary between reality and dream.
His new collection, titled ‘FADE’, not only redefines haute couture but also prompts a profound reflection on the transformation of our environment.
Presented in Paris on 29 January 2025, this proposal marks a shift in the Japanese designer’s approach, moving away from purely technical exploration to delve into a visual and emotional narrative that transports us to another dimension.
The desert as an archive of time
Each of Nakazato‘s collections results from an immersion in geographies of great symbolic significance.
On this occasion, the starting point was the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), a supernatural landscape in the eastern Sahara that was once the seabed.
There, surrounded by majestic chalk formations eroded over millions of years, the designer confronted the colossal scale of time.
His journey became an introspective trance, especially when, lost in the nocturnal immensity, his vehicle wandered for hours without direction, allowing his imagination to dissolve into the dust and darkness.
The boundary between the real and the oneiric
Covered in sand, in a state of consciousness altered by vastness and uncertainty, Nakazato evoked the Japanese myth of Namazu, a colossal catfish that dwells beneath the earth and whose agitation causes earthquakes.
In the darkness of the desert, the ground turned liquid, the dunes seemed like petrified waves, and the designer felt that Tokyo and the Sahara merged into the same ephemeral reality.
The vision of a future city, worn by time and climatic transformations, took hold of him.
Fashion as an echo of becoming
The title ‘FADE’ alludes to erosion, to the fading of material things and memories.
Nakazato invites us to view fashion not only as an aesthetic expression but as a reflection of the cycles of history and nature.
In a world where climate change is already altering our everyday landscapes, the collection becomes a poetic and tangible omen of what could be the fate of modern cities.
With ‘FADE’, Yuima Nakazato transcends the limits of design to create a sensory universe in which fashion becomes an archive of time, a silent witness to the mutability of the world and our own existence.
As in the White Desert, where wind and sand ceaselessly sculpt new forms, Nakazato reminds us that everything is in perpetual transformation.
