Kenzo story

Kenzo story – The history of a French luxury house Kenzo started in 1970 when a Japanese designer Kenzo Takada laid the foundation of a successful fashion company.

Takada worked from Paris. He introduced the concept of a jungle and the idea of Japanese and Parisian styles’ fusion.

These main thematics has been kept until now. Today LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (commonly known as LVMN) owns the luxury brand.

The respect towards the primary vision amazes. Even though Kenzo is no longer a head designer, the values and the ideas introduced by him remain solid and the current designers Humberto Leon and Carol are happy to maintain them.

Not only they continue the fantasy of jungle (a sweatshirt with an illustration of a tiger has become iconic), they actually undertake actions to protect animal life.

Kenzo entered into a partnership with Blue Marine Foundation that protects oceans from pollution and overfishing. In 2014 they launched a unisex collection in defense of marine life. The slogan was: ‘No fish no nothing’.

When talking about being hired Carol Lim says: “…we not only presented our viewpoint on the collection, we presented on the whole universe”.

Humberto Leon: “We only know how to give ourselves to the brand. Everything you see has us in it”.

It is totally true that the new designers pass the brand through themselves. They add the vision, they add the new icons (the tiger, the eye) and apart from that they incorporate artistic contemporary world in their collections, blending foreign and French styles as a tradition established by Kenzo Takada.

We can see the new vision in the commercial of the fragrance ‘KENZO world’. The commercial tells us a story. 

In the beginning, you see a social situation where everyone including an elegant woman in the center has to listen to the official speech.

When the woman leaves the event and enters the empty hall, you can see that she feels suppressed by the restrictive frames of society. Then, all of a sudden, we see her transform all the bad feelings into the flow of energy and emotions.

She is free now, rebellious, playful and happy.  When she is herself as if she possesses a special power (we can see special effects in the video).  She makes a vivid dance of a real life where she creates her own rules and her own music.

A big eye that appears at the end of the video symbolizes the point of view. This commercial shows the joy of improvisation, the beauty of unexpected and the value of a unique vision that lets one enjoy the living. We can sensate the delight of nonconformism.

Perhaps this highly creative and incredibly original advertisement can have other interpretations but even without trying to understand the sense, you enjoy the colors and the dynamic of the video.

The recent Kenzo film 2017 ‘Cabiria, Charity, Chastity’ by Natasha Lyonne presents different views that make one think even deeper. If you wish to be surprised again, you can watch it on Youtube.

In the end, we can say that Kenzo is not about classic, it is not about elegance. Kenzo story is more about something beautiful but unconventional, something modern but wild… It is more about how we perceive ourselves than how others see us… Kenzo is lots of things at once. Kenzo is diversity!