Japanese Streetwear Designer Masayuki Ino Wins 2018’s LVMH Prize
By Something CuratedJapanese designer Masayuki Ino was announced as the winner of the 2018 LVMH Prize for Young Designers for his streetwear label Doublet, underlining the appeal of gender-neutral designs for a generation of consumers rejecting traditional categorisations. The win continued the trend of streetwear’s growing recognition by the mainstream, also demonstrated by Supreme’s James Jebbia being dubbed Menswear Designer of the Year at the CFDA Fashion Awards earlier this week.
Actress Emma Stone revealed the winner at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in the presence of jury members including Karl Lagerfeld of Fendi, Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière and Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller. Ino beat some 1,300 applicants to walk away with a prize of 300,000 euros, plus a year of mentoring from experts at luxury giant LVMH, parent of fashion houses including Vuitton, Loewe, Céline, and Marc Jacobs. The runner-up special prize went to South Korean designer Rok Hwang’s London-based women’s wear label Rokh.
At 38, Ino was the eldest candidate among the nine finalists of this year’s edition of the prize. A graduate of Tokyo’s Mode Gakuen College of Fashion and Design, he worked as an accessories designer for Miharayasuhiro before launching Doublet in 2012 with an ethos he termed as “daily wear with strangeness.” His graphic, whimsical designs, such as sweatshirts featuring distorted varsity logos, have been popularised by celebrities including Travis Scott and Kendall Jenner.
The label was one of six brands selected by the Tokyo Fashion Award last year, which promotes Japanese fashion overseas. Doublet’s spring collection, stocked at Dover Street Market in London and 10 Corso Como in Shanghai, featured plastic-covered shirts. His presentation for LVMH included diverse prints, tailored jackets made of selvage Harrisons cloth, and T-shirts that expand when soaked in liquid.
Ghesquière said the jury was won over by the originality of the designs: “He’s unlike anyone else. It’s completely individual, and in his category, which can be loosely defined as sportswear, but in fact is so much more, there’s a quality of execution and a level of technical research that are really impressive.” Waight Keller, joining LVMH’s jury for the first time, was struck by Ino’s innovative take on fabric development and packaging. “It’s really a kind of 360-degree view he had on that, and it felt fresh and modern — almost like a modern-day Issey Miyake, experimenting, trying new technology and really trying to push the boundaries of how you view textiles and how you interpret it into clothes,” she told WWD.
Feature image via Amazon Fashion Week TOKYO