AW04 Issey Miyake x Aya Takano ‘Superflat’ Mesh Socks

For Issey Miyake’s Autumn 2004 collection, the Japanese designer worked in collaboration with Aya Takano, a similarly Eastern painter and Superflat artist. Originally an assistant to Takashi Murakami, Takano would aid in popularizing his signature ‘Superflat’ aesthetic throughout the 2000s. The obscure art from aims to push focus on the two dimensionality of figures, while exposing the fetishes of Japanese consumerism. More specifically, Takano’s work fixates on Japan’s 1980s obsession with the look of pre-pubescent girls, in which she hopes to reinvent. Using semi-nude or nude pre-pubescent figures in many of her prints, the creative attempts to illustrate the impact of a heroine in society. Looking through the female gaze, she denies any relation to the sexualization of these girls, and instead pushes onlookers to focus on their androgynous signs of growth. Putting such prominence on the future, her dream-like style hopes to embrace the child-like spirit in an authentic way, while shifting the overarching narrative towards the female gender.

 

Debuting in the Autumn of 2004, this mesh pair of socks comes as one of the collection’s largest canvas’ for Takano’s work. Sporting in the incredibly rare sky blue colour way, the artisan’s nude figures are pictured floating effortlessly on an Alien island, in the foreground of a volcano. To finish, the print is sculptured atop a mesh, skin-fitting base, in unheard of new with tags condition.