The Most Underrated Thing at Milan Design Week? The Staff Uniforms
Milan Design Week is where fashion brands do literally anything except fashion. It’s where Issey Miyake unveils chairs made of pleated waste paper, where Stone Island hosts immersive listening rooms, and where Gucci dispenses custom sodas from branded vending machines.
The emphasis is very much on the “design” this week but that doesn’t mean it’s a totally fashion-less afair, however, you just need to look in the right places. This year, the Milan Design Week staff uniforms are the most stylish thing out.
Two of Japan's most prominent designers — a critically acclaimed newcomer and a legend of the old guard — designed staff uniforms for two of the coolest exhibitions in the Italian city.
Yohji Yamamoto is one of the biggest names in all of Japanese fashion. He’s also reportedly close friends with Aï Kato, creative director of Aesop, lent his teams’ talents to producing uniforms for the luxury skincare label.
While Aesop opens a multi-sensorial experience dedicated to its first lamp, where a hand-cast brass plinth holds a wide hand-blown glass crown, the Aesop staff are clad in custom jackets by Y’s, Yamamoto’s womenswear line dedicated to casual everyday clothing.
The jacket is classic Yamamoto: an all-black overcoat, deftly oversized, and defined by a crinkled fabric produced through what the brand calls a “vintage processing technique.” It’s hard not to be a bit jealous. This kind of Yohji Yamamoto outerwear normally costs a pretty penny, and Aesop is paying people paid to wear it. Dream job!
Across town, at ASICS’ Milan Design Week debut, there’s another immersive public installation and yet another range of swaggy uniforms.
Soshiotsuki, fresh from winning the LVMH Prize, trades its Armani-flavored suits for ASICS tracksuits. The brand’s custom tracksuit includes a navy jackets cut loosely but tightly cropped, the velour fabric draping and gathering at the elasticated waistband and cuffs.
Bringing Soshiotsuki's reimagined 20th-century tailoring to ASICS cutting-edge athletic apparel is a fascinating clash of worlds, not too dissimilar from the recent surprise link-up between ASICS and American tailor Thom Browne. But unlike ASICS x Thom Browne, this is strictly a work uniform.
It’s a shame, because having Soshiotsuki, a label that’s thus far largely steered away from collaborations, take on a full-blown ASICS collection is quite compelling. And for that matter, where’s the official Yohji Yamamoto x Aesop collaboration?
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