The Insider gets inside the head(wear) of Katsuya Kamo
Arguably, the towering tiaras that adorned every girl in Karl Lagerfeld’s masterful take on white paper for S/S09 Chanel couture stole the show. Made by the Tokyo based milliner and hairstylist, Katsuya Kamo, they were delicate creations that alternately brought to mind birds in flight and confectionary as light as air. Meanwhile every pillar and prominent surface was garlanded with paper camellias and roses; and Lagerfeld sent out a monochromatic procession of models in silhouettes echoing cut paper.
“I wanted to be a fashion designer,” says Kamo, “but I didn’t know how to do that. A friend showed me hairdressing work in the salon, and I understood that it was a kind of fashion so I thought I could try it instead.” Over a 20 year long career, the endlessly inventive Kamo has adopted a sculptural, dramatic approach to his twin disciplines, working in materials as disparate as mirrors, feathers, silk, latex, wood, plastic bags and paper.
He’s worked with Jun Takahashi of UNDERCOVER and Maison Martin Margiela, but perhaps most enduring has been his collaboration with Junya Watanabe. “I respect Junya so much. There is no talk before I create,” he says. “I simply show him what I’ve started, and if he likes it, I continue to work on it. If not, I start again from the beginning. It’s like being a trainee monk, working in a very Japanese way.”
Kamo was introduced to Lagerfeld by V magazine’s Stephen Gan: “He booked me to shoot with Karl Lagerfeld for an editorial and in the shoot’s pauses we talked about working together. Karl is a really smart, sweet and an intuitive person. He told me his idea for the show came from paper and showed me one paper flower. I saw it as a really beautiful sculpture and that was it.”
Inspired by this, Kamo took the initial kernel of inspiration and ran with it. Together with a team of helpers and hundreds of sheets of paper, he produced fantastical cornucopias of roses, twigs, feathers, leaf fronds and camellias. “Usually Western designers don’t give me much room to work, but Lagerfeld gave me so much.”
All of which created an indelible image that lingers to this day. And what better way to herald in a new decade than by starting on a fresh sheet of paper?
Kin Woo writes for Dazed & Confused, Ponystep and Androgyny magazine and is a contributing editor for Dazed Digital. He has produced films for international artists Pheonix, Patrick Wolf and The Big Pink
Valerio Mezzanotti is the photographer behind Nowfashion. He has shot editorial and advertising for The New York Times, Le Monde, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana amongst others
