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As parkour artists started jumping around the balconies of the Maison du Judo like little monkeys, much to the heart palpitations of the fashion congregation, the mood was set for a Kenzo jungle show that would blow anyone’s mind away. A succession of safari looks quickly established the vibe for Carol Lim and Humberto Leon’s SS13 collection: they used the legendary 1970s Kenzo store, The Jungle Jap, as a point of departure for a show revolving around the idea of the urban jungle, as well as the actual South Asian jungles, which they’d visited during the season. The result was, quite literally, a jungle of prints, patterns and colours. Everywhere you looked there was a new detail, a logo, a check, or a drawstring, but like any jungle this disorder of sights and sounds seemed to come together in perfect harmony, like in the case of a yellow and sand mini-tiger-striped safari shirt with short basket print sleeves worn over a tight black jumper with the words ‘Roar! Roar! Roar!’ printed in yellow on it. It wasn’t really supposed to make sense, but it did. A rich, sort of feathered maxi-camouflage reminiscent of animal print was introduced in jackets, shirts, trousers and shorts mid-collection (as if it weren’t genius enough already) manifesting the collection’s urban jungle element with a sense of something slightly ghetto. Finally, the Leons drew the already somewhat celebrated embroidered Kenzo logo jumpers of their AW12 womenswear into the collection, adding the embroidered head of a tiger roaring behind the Kenzo logo. As a tribute to Kenzo’s jungle days, the collection was impeccable. As the second instalment of a new menswear chapter for the label, it was immaculate.
Text: Anders Christian Madsen
Photography: Mitchell Sams
Click here to see our SS13 Menswear coverage in full.
