When Kenzo Takada first arrived in Paris in 1965 he only intended to stay  there for 6 months, but he never left.  He started off by selling his sketches of dresses for 25F each, but just 5 years later he managed to open a small boutique in Galerie VIvienne which was the start of introducing his clothing collection heavily embedded with Japanese influences.

His success was fast and furious which was surprising in the closed xenophobic world of French fashion back then, He also took his collections to New York and Tokyo establishing himself on the international stage.  Always one to shake things up in 1978 and 1979, he held his shows in a circus tent, finishing with horsewomen performers wearing see-through uniforms .

One of his more famous sayings was “fashion is like eating, you shouldn’t stick with the same menu.”  By constantly changing with an almost mix’n match philosophy his collections pivoted him to the top echelon of French  designers.  He also paved the way for the highly influential Japanese designers who came after him, such as Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo.

Kenzo was in a  relationship with the architect Xavier de Castella, who died in 1990 from AIDS aged just 38. It was a tragedy that deeply affected Kenzo and from which he never fully recovered, as he confessed two years ago in Gala magazine . “His untimely death left me with a wound that never healed . In my life, I’ve done a lot of stupid things. If he was still here, he would have done a few less. “

Kenzo Takada died on 4 October 2020 from COVID-19. He was 81 years old