Kapital FW19 Lookbook
Kapital is a radical label, but it’s not like they went about trying to reinvent clothing or what looks good.
They just see with different eyes…
Like true artists, their compulsion is to create. But in the tradition of Eastern genius, Kapital doesn’t create in a vacuum. They creatio in situ - Creation in Context - the idea that there has always been something that came before and the influences are just waiting to be admired and appreciated through the process.
The end result shows how everything in nature and culture isn’t as divergent as they may first appear; they’re tied together seamlessly. Or, in the case of Kapital, culture is tied together at the seams.
Kapital finds inspiration everywhere.
Scattered amongst the ages like jigsaw pieces from a million different puzzles, Kapital reassembles disparate images to produce brand new vistas.
A scene from Italy’s tailored past is cut to fit into 1960’s New York, and the Wild West, and Hawaiian tourism, and pre-industrial Japan, and Moroccan tile mosaics, and Native American iconography, and crust punk, and 90’s streetwear and on and on.
Take Kapital’s ever popular Century Denim for an easy example. Western style jeans that use a century’s old Eastern tradition of sashiko stitching and dyeing process - combining cultures and rewriting history for our modern sensibilities.
Or for a more difficult example, take the Thunderbird Jacket. It combines the traditional American trainyard, hunting, Native American beading and imagery, and cartoons into one solid piece.
Though many of the ideas, elements, and details feel like they belong to their time and place, Kapital proves that they aren’t sacrosanct. It’s an all-inclusive world tour and the only price for admission is getting dressed.
But maybe this intellectualization of Kapital’s radical work misses the point altogether because, “sometimes things are just cool because they’re cool.”
