Deconstructing samurai pants design philosophyfrom @frontoffice.co

Transcript

Let's talk about samurai pants, Hakama. Something that is by construction of pleated skirts, pleated trousers, but has so much Easter eggs, hidden meaning, like a real insight into Japanese culture. With five pleats in front, two at the bad. That's a construction that keeps the circumference around the waist tight, and that flows into a larger shape in the leg. And the purpose of this wider circumference around your feet is to disguise or to hide your footwork during fights, during sword fights, so that your actions in battle are unpredictable. So they come in two variants, a skirt and a pair of pants. They're called Andon and Umanori. The pants, Umanori, literally translates to horse rider. And these pants are a physical symbol of Bushido, the samurai moral code. There's five pleats in front, two at the bad, and they represent the seven moral virtues of Bushido. Honesty, honor, loyalty, courage, compassion, respect, justice. And in the front, it presents you with two seemingly conflicting ideas. They look balanced, but they are asymmetrical. Tier are three pleats on the right and two pleats on the left. So balance, but asymmetry. And that is a metaphor for a very Japanese worldview, and acceptance of imperfection rank clothes are just clothes. But as a garment, everything physical is simultaneously functional, cultural, historical. This is a document of who the samurai are as a piece of art, as a piece of communication, perfection. So to a designer, what's the lesson here? How do you make your own hakama, but how do you iterate on perfection? I suppose the lesson to learn isn't how do I produce perfection, it is how do I tell my own tier? Lesson is autobiography. So I try and play rank experiment with ideas of asymmetry, sometimes unsuccessfully. But my pleated trousers are by modern standards unusual, uncommon. Instead of an Italian style reverse pleat, which is more common nowadays, they use forward pleats, which are simultaneously classically English and formally Japanese to present trousers that can be read by two cultures. Seasons track pants from the front look conventional. But if you turn to the side, once again, we have pleats that face each other like hakama and then fall away to a wider circumference. And I don't present those details front on because I feel appreciation shouldn't be advertised. It's not for everyone in the room. It's for the wearer. These clothes are for someone who looks at small details, that sees big ideas about design, culture, history. These clothes are biographical of us. This is a document of who I design for.