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PUGMENT & Fashion

PUGMENT's genre-defying creations transcend the framework of conventional prêt-à-porter and haute couture. Indeed, their garments are veritable works of art, inspired by the history and climate of fashion itself. Stewarded by Karin Imafuku and Masahiro Otani, PUGMENT recontextualizes fashion from the inside out, providing a collection of innovative alternatives.

1XXX-2018-2XXX

PUGMENT's 2018 AW collection "1XXX-2018-2XXX" is an extended conceptual meditation on the vicissitudes of Japanese fashion from the mid-19th century Meiji period to the present day, filtered through the lens of futuristic science fiction. The dawn of modernity heralded a gradual shift from traditional Japanese garb to Western styles, initiating the "hacking" of everyday garments in the lexicon of fashion. In due course, this accreted distortion gave birth to its own unique movement, producing a value system that has been inherited in the present day amidst a peculiarly heterogenous foreground.

PUGMENT's new line calls to mind the bleached protective suits of dystopian clean-up crews. Swaddling the bodies of their models, the ghosts of fashions past envelop these creations like the bloated vision of a future to come. In a world without humans, fashion adopts a volition and sentiment of its own accord, as if the garments themselves were possessed by spirits untold. Above all, this imagined possession stands as a bitingly critical account of the Japanese relationship between fashion and corporeal body.

1XXX-2018-2XXX: The Book

PUGMENT's current collection, along with the pieces featured in their March 2018 show at the Komagome Soko, have been documented by photographer Kenta Cobayashi. From the contemporaneous generation of PUGMENT's founders, Cobayashi's oeuvre is distinguished by heavy digital manipulation, with his recent work exploring a negative/positive inverse. The present publication combines Cobayashi's new photographic interpretations with a comprehensive compendium of Japanese fashion history, replete with text and images compiled by PUGMENT. A monumental genre-crossing compilation vaulting over the boundaries of lookbook, photobook, and Japanese fashion history archive, this volume is itself a work of art, completed by graphic designer Shun Ishizuka.