Yuima Nakazato Presents Its New Haute Couture Autumn/Winter 2023-24 Collection: Magma

The shocking experiences I had during my 2022 visit to Kenya still remain vivid in my mind to this day.

Among the many memories I have of that time, the mountains of garbage I saw are particularly hard to forget. The spontaneous flames, the reeking odors, the garish colors of the plastic trash—it seemed like the end of the world, and it left my head spinning.

The other day, I saw a piece by Hokusai commonly known as “Aka-Fuji” at an art gallery. This scene of Fuji in red called to mind thoughts of the magma sleeping within the mountain, and somehow made me aware not only of its beauty, but also of the spooky nature of the landscape as well.

This is it, I thought. Using a photo I had taken while in Kenya, I graded it all in red and printed it out on a piece of fabric. Suddenly, the awful scenery became abstract, and the mounds of man-made garbage somehow turned into something almost like a landscape.

At that moment, I realized that it was possible to reconsider the essential meaning of a thing, thereby endowing it with a new meaning and an entirely different value.

Red usually represents warning or crises. However, rather than viewing it as an alert to the environmental issues facing us today, I’ve chosen to put my belief in the color red, and use it to express my conviction that there is a way for us to change the future.

Yuima Nakazato