Setchu stages first runway show in Milan menswear

Six months ago, when Satoshi Kuwata made his global runway show debut with Setchu in Florence, he swore it would be his last live show. This Friday in Milan, he opened the latest menswear runway season.

Like in his debut, the Japanese designer has gone fishing for inspiration. This time, it was not in the Pacific but near Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, where the discovery of striking straw-using artisans was the wellspring of this dramatic collection.

Presented inside a 100-year-plus atelier in Milan, the co-ed show opened with a leggy lass in an oversized man’s shirt, cut with kimono-worthy sleeves, followed by a matinee idol Asian male model in brilliant giant white cotton pants that hung off the waist. Note to all fashionistas: the elephantine pant is again essential in every man’s wardrobe.

Kuwata played accomplishedly with a series of colonial motifs – safari jackets or rangers’ coats – cutting them loose and disentangled. In a sense, the biggest news of this collection was how the female models looked even better in Setchu’s masculine tailoring than the male models.

One gal in a khaki look that riffed on Grace Kelly in John Ford’s classic film, Mogambo, looked utterly divine, her allure enhanced by a triplet of straw bags she carried in her right hand. She was followed by a raven-haired lass in a white mini-tunic cocktail dress wrapped in a wildly woven basket.

“It’s a new side of Setchu. I was under a lot of pressure from friends to show again. But what attracted me was how much I could express, even with a small budget. The goal is always to make something emotional,” said Japan-born Satoshi.

Kuwata is one of fashion’s great image-makers, and his noble African in a slim blazer paired with a white T-shirt and midnight blue dhoti shorts was a look of great understated elegance — especially on a Milan Friday when temperatures soared up to 38 Celsius.

“I love playful functionality, but timeless and with another joy,” he expounded in his sibylline manner.

Trained by Huntsman and Davies & Son — the latter being the oldest tailor on Savile Row — Satoshi is an excellent pattern cutter, a skill few of his contemporaries will ever achieve. Though this season, he insisted he wanted sculpting, not just tailoring.

“Victoria Falls is one of the best fishing destinations to catch tiger fish. And I met this tribe — the Batonga — and their way of weaving baskets, which is quite different from any other country. So, the construction is random, which is what I wanted in this collection — organic random shapes,” insisted Satoshi, the 2023 LVMH Prize winner.