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Daily Fashion & Runway News
Kenzo launched in 1970 as the brainchild of Japanese-born Kenzo Takada. The look epitomizes "West meets East," merging fun prints with an ethnic vibe, flowers (the house’s signature), and textures to blend Kenzo's natural Japanese influences with Parisian culture. In 1983, Kenzo launched menswear, and five years later, the first Kenzo fragrance was introduced, starting a highly successful series of fragrances and skin care. Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy bought the label in 1993, and the next year the house covered the Parisian Pont Neuf Bridge in 10,000 flowers. At the age of 60, Takada announced his retirement in 1999. Now, the designer at the helm is Sardinia-based Antonio Marras, who joined the brand in September 2003 and continues the original vision of creating clothes for the woman or man who's not afraid of color and prints, but still wants to look pulled together.
“What Marras has brought to the label, which has languished since Kenzo's retirement following his 30-year retrospective in October 1999, is a Mediterranean passion allied to an insistence on rigorous control and a determination that nothing, however technically baffling it may seem at first, is impossible.”—Hilary Alexander The Telegraph
“What I admire in Kenzo is its modernity, the incredible blend of coherence and heterogeneity. I love the personal way to mix seemingly different genres and styles, and the natural poetry that happens when they are assembled.”—Antonio Marras Kenzo Biography
“In discussions about the lack of design talent in Milan, Marras is often forgotten. But he is not only an imaginative metteur en scène; he also invented a world of his own that he has taken to Kenzo.”—Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
Antonio Marras