The Game-Changer

“I think it’s all about different styles of volume for Autumn Winter – dropped shoulders and low waistlines, playing with proportions and elongating the figure,” she says. “The pieces might derive from masculine clothing archetypes,” Abe says of the cocooning coats and tweed sports jackets, adding, “I’ve also played with couture techniques, adding volume in sleeves or tulle at the hips.”

Abe is a master splicer and manages to meld seemingly opposite fabrics – knits into leather, chiffon into tweed – to create transformative designs that with the pull of a zip or the unbuttoning of a sleeve mutate to suit your needs. That chameleon quality has become a sacai trademark.

Yet this is not design for design’s sake. The mission was born out of Abe’s own desire for a versatile and different-looking wardrobe. “There is so much fashion out there, I want to create something that only I can create. That is the uniqueness of sacai. Some of the specialty is rooted in the fact that the collection is made and designed in Tokyo. Our customs mean that we don’t change. We go to the office and then on the metro and go to dinner – that’s our lifestyle,” says Abe of one aspect of Tokyo’s rich culture that has influenced her approach.

Abe has been fascinated by the thrill of innovation since she was a young girl. “There is nothing like marketing in what I do. I create things that I want to wear, and I have always wanted to wear something different to other people since the age of 11,” says the indefatigable designer. After working at Comme des Garçons, she left to have a baby and started her own label from simple means. “I began with 10 balls of a yarn and a needle – I could not imagine where this could lead,” says Abe of the knitted dresses she debuted 16 years ago.

Now with a fully-fledged studio, Abe can go deeper into the process. “I enjoy the dialogue with our pattern cutters and the development of new shapes. I like to try new fabrics and there is always a lot of challenge and risk in that but it always has to be wearable not just a show piece,” says Abe. “The profits come back to creating the next collection. It’s a good circle and an important way to run the business,” she adds. She aims for a sense of timelessness and Abe herself often wears something from five years ago mixed with the new. Her go-to accessories are an Hermès Kelly bag, a Rolex watch and Cartier jewellery.

From the new collection there is much to covet. Consider the fitted coats with detachable sleeves and face-framing collars; skater skirt suits in windowpane check wool; slit tweed pencil skirts that reveal a flutter of chiffon, or the sporty drop-waist pleated cotton tunic dresses held in with straps that can loosen or tighten as one needs. Sacai innovates with a beautiful point of difference.