Rei Kawakubo titled her Spring 2025 collection Uncertain Future — a phrase that echoes across climate, politics, and economics. She didn’t define the uncertainty, but hinted at a quiet resistance: that “air and transparency could signify a kind of hope.”
In Kawakubo’s world, uncertainty doesn’t demand answers — it invites abstraction. Protection takes form in sculptural garments: stiff floral jacquards shaped like cones, narrow slits offering only a glimpse of what lies within. There were silhouettes that resembled portable fitting rooms, held close to the body, with only a parting of the curtain — a suggestion of presence, not full exposure.
Elsewhere, protection came bundled: round, rectangular, banana-shaped masses layered and wrapped in tulle. Fabric swirled into domes, soft-serve-like, at once playful and impenetrable — armour made light.
This was not a collection of solutions, but of shelter. A dreamscape where form becomes refuge, and hope, however abstract, floats in the air.
