The fashion brand tactor’s second season collection for Spring/Summer 2018 was showcased at a joint exhibition titled “rooms experience” held on the 13th floor at Gotanda TOC Building in Tokyo from September 6 through 8, 2017.
The collection’s theme “inBETWEEN” represents what lies between various different values such as those found in global issues and religions. This is reflected on combined use of contrasting colors and materials such as black and white or hard and soft fabrics. It seems to me that this theme represents the very method and approach that the designer takes, that is, to explore what lies between Japanese and western clothing. For example, tactor’s T-shirts for this season are square-shaped when placed on an even surface, featuring a flat design with holes for the head and arms. The only top with a printed pattern for S/S 2018 is designed after a traditional Japanese festival jacket called “happi.” Each item borrows some element of Japanese clothing. Japanese clothes are made to suit people of any body shapes and heights. Its gracefulness is found in the room between the body and clothes, not the way how they are tightly fitted to the body. In the Western culture, on the contrary, sharp lines along the body is regarded as glamorous. tactor’s S/S 2018 items feature belted waist, adopting both the Japanese and Western elements of gracefully showing the curvy line of the body.
tactor has made its original black and white stripe fabric sprinkled with blue representing peace. It seems to be an embodiment of the designer’s hope that people who wear the clothes feel peaceful even if they are in between some kind of conflict.
As with the last season, silver lamé jacquard and pile fabrics are a part of the S/S 2018 collection. tactor designer Nayuko Yamamoto uses pile fabrics every season, trying to let the Japanese high-quality pile fabrics be known to the world. The fabrics she uses are manufactured in Imabari city, Ehime prefecture, Japan. Yamamoto tries to find new value in pile fabrics, which are almost solely made into towels, for luxury fashion. She worked with a fabric manufacturer and developed the pile fabric for this season’s collection. It has smoother texture with less jagged feel compared to the one used for the last season. This reveals Yamamoto’s passion to spread the Japanese craftsmanship to the world through fashion. I hope that readers will have the opportunity to actually touch the fabric and experience the feel with your own skin.
The brand name “tactor” was coined after the English word “tactile.” This season’s collection reveals the designer’s unique approach to the visual and tactile aspects. Referring to the particularly eye-catching lamé jacquard, Yamamoto said, “To me, it is the richest in color.” She uses it as an accent in a simple color palette. It seems to me that the brand suggests “modest luxury in everyday life.”
Brand: tactor
