L.A. Fashion Week Spring '07: Evisu
Evisu proved it is more than a denim brand during its Oct. 15 showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif. According to Managing Director Peter Caplowe, Los Angeles was a natural choice to showcase the Japanese-based company on the runway.
“One of the key messages that we wanted to get across by doing a show is that Evisu is not a jeans company; we’re a fashion house,” Caplowe said. “We are known for our jeans, and we’re very happy about that, but that’s not what Evisu is mainly about.”
The show, which incorporated a strong Japanese inspiration, included a mixture of denim, sportswear, feminine dresses and vintage pieces from the company’s archives.
Evisu’s signature raw denim looked best in men’s loose, baggy jeans paired with blazers and flip-flops or worn decoratively as a jacket by women. Other men’s looks included souvenir jackets, Japanese Hawaiian shirts and overalls.
Womenswear designer Bonita Newby experimented with fabrics such as a paper twill on an elegantly tailored trench coat and a cotton voile with a washi paper cherry-bloom print on dresses. Denim styles ran the gamut from shorts to overalls, skinny pants and dresses. And there were plenty of kimono shapes, such as a jacket patterned after a baby’s christening kimono worn with a pleated skirt and a long silk kimono with an embroidered Japanese garden scene paired with a skinny capri pant. —N. Jayne Seward
