Tokyo based designer/artist J. Sabatino premiered his Fall/Winter line at gallery space, Dactyl Foundation in NYC. Being an installation artist for years before dipping his hands onto apparel design, Sabatino chose to combine the two. On Tuesday Feb 16, 2010 he showed his intimate collection featuring eight looks as an art installation presentation.The inspiration behind J. Sabatino‘s collection came from his own personal experiences, his trips to New York City as a child. He remembers going out buying records and looking at all the interesting people with their unique styles. He quotes, “The street magically mixed their wardrobe with things they found at thrift stores”. This was all coming out of the NYC underground scene at that time. Sabatino used two films as projective backdrops to reference this era. One was Jim Jarmusch‘s “Permanent Vacation” and the other was Ulli Lommel‘s “Blank Generation“. The visual images of the films would loop while mood lighting set the stage where the models sat as another form of visual display. One model would then take a walk to the side of the room to pose for a minute or so. The others would remain sitting until it would be their turn to walk over and pose, they all took turns doing so throughout the evening wearing the collection of grey’s, blue’s, black and dark denim. There was two record album print dress shirts one paired with a black knit cashmere overcoat and the other with an olive plaid cardigan. One look was as simple as a two toned cotton flight jacket and black rinsed denim while another was a tuxedo pant and jacket worn with a striped crewneck sweater. The looks were presented as if thrown together giving it that effortless vibe while not losing its bold statement. As an example to this, was my favorite look, the blue wool checkered suit jacket with the blue wool checkered pleated pants.
Overall: J. Sabatino men’s line was casually cool.
To connect with this intimate collection and to captivate the emotion behind the designers inspiration,
Fall/Winter 2010 soundtrack:
The Lounge Lizards, Tom Waits, James Chance, Elvis Presley, Charles Parker, DNA and the Contortions
Images provided by Joshua T. Fichter