Anrealage: from outer space

"Another one of these crazy edgy brands that are more on the research side than real fashion": this statement was made by a close friend who works in fashion too, and I disagree. True, the collections from Anrealage (the contraction of "a real", "unreal" and "age"), the brand founded by Morinaga-san in 2003, are demanding. But when I started to look at it more closely, for my latest article for Beaux Arts Magazine (in French), I became fascinated.

Anrealage is based on the very Japanese notion of "Sukoshi Fushigi", "a bit mysterious", both from the conceptual point of view but also on the execution of the products, through details that are catching the eye, but at the second sight only.

Just like artists, Morinaga-san has had several periods over a total span of 17 years (!) during which he experienced many ideas and techniques: first by repeating almost infinitely the same gestures again and again, creating clothes that were also pieces of art at the same time, then by focusing on the shape of the garments (making clothes in shapes of balls or cubes), or on tech, but with a specific approach. For instance, he presented for SS16 a collection of entirely white garments. Viewers had to use the flash of their phones to realize that actually the collection was brightly coloured, thanks to an old technology, photochromism (Fendi took again the idea in 2021).

In 2022, he went litterally to the moon, by presenting a collection developed with the Nasa including jumpsuits filled with Aerogel, a substance allowing humans to sustain cold up to -196°C.

Even though this is not your average cool T-shirt and fun logo brand, Anrealage is also for me one of the reasons why I like fashion, as it questions our relationship to it and forces us to look at it with a new eye.