John Lawrence Sullivan by Arashi Yanagawa presented Spring Summer 2027 in Berlin with Androgyny, a collection shaped by opposing forces that refuse to stay separate. Strength meets fragility, discipline meets impulse, and masculinity moves into femininity without asking for a clear border. The body becomes the central subject, not as a fixed image, but as a place where contradiction can exist with force.
SPRING SUMMER 2027
The starting point comes from Bettina Rheims’ 1990 portrait series Modern Lovers, which captured bodies outside conventional ideals and social expectations. Yanagawa translates that spirit into garments that challenge the usual division between menswear and womenswear. In the menswear offering, boat slit-neck tops expose and soften the neckline, shorts are constructed to resemble skirts, and shoes with heels alter posture and attitude. These choices shift masculine dressing away from rigidity and toward a more unstable, sensual language.
Double-cuff shirts and mini-length jumpsuits developed from exaggerated military shirts bring authority into a new register. Instead of creating a simple exchange between masculine and feminine codes, the collection places both inside the same body. The result feels direct, tense, and deliberately unresolved.
Textiles play a key role in this ambiguity. Raschel lace, net tulle, crushed velvet, and patent finishes appear across the collection, bringing materials often linked to ornament and exposure into a sharper framework. They reveal and conceal at once, adding softness without removing power. Yanagawa uses these surfaces to question how fabric changes the reading of a body, especially when placed against tailoring, military references, and strict construction.
The idea of restraint runs through the collection through the Japanese concept of shibari. Yanagawa connects its meanings to both the physical act of binding and the discipline built into tailoring. Jackets and coats feature self-fabric tapes extending from beneath the lapels, allowing the garments to wrap and tie around the body. Inspired by Nancy Grossman’s bondage drawings, these details turn tailoring into something physical, intimate, and controlled.
Accessories extend the theme of transformation. Snake and lizard patterns, along with python leather, appear on shoes, belts, bags, and gloves. These textures function as a second skin, referencing shedding, renewal, and the constant remaking of the self. The body in this collection never settles. It changes through fabric, posture, surface, and silhouette.
For Spring Summer 2027, John Lawrence Sullivan presents androgyny as tension rather than neutrality. Yanagawa does not smooth out difference or soften contradiction. He builds around it. The collection’s strongest moments come from that refusal to resolve, offering clothing for a body that can be disciplined and impulsive, protected and exposed, masculine and feminine, all at once.
