Kenzo La Collection Memento N°2

PARIS — Right around the time supercomputers with dazzling color displays could suddenly fit in pockets and palms of hands, attention spans began to crumble like thinning eggshells decades after an environmental catastrophe. There is just so much happening outside that the eggshell mind cannot possibly steel itself from total collapse. Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, the creative forces behind Kenzo since 2011, years ago set about doing things differently and thus have established a bulwark against the rest of the world where both their work for Kenzo and Opening Ceremony may flourish. Wednesday night at Le Trianon, Lim and Leon unveiled their second and latest Memento collection as part of a three act Japanese Kagura performance. The idea that editors and buyers would hike out to the 18th arrondissement for an intensive 30-minute theatre program during Paris Fashion Week is fanciful, but Kenzo has its many devotees and those lucky to have a ticket to the show were positively rapt for an experience unlike any other this week. An eight-headed dragon was slayed on stage, humanity was avenged, the world was saved. A legitimate three-act play that is strong in tradition flies in the face of everything we have come to know in 2017. This departure from the traditional runway formula made for an ideal vehicle in which to present what is a collection drawn from the original archives of Kenzo founder Kenzo Takada, which was heavy on denim and tropical print and featured kimono details t