LEAF XIA

 

FETISH: TWEED, SCUBA, PATCHWORK - BASICALLY, A BIT OF EVERYTHING

 

WHY THEY WANT THIS: On a cold, rainy, late afternoon, Leaf Xia’s collection was a burst of accentuated eyes over torsos, slender hips over bare chests and 60’s Mod girl earrings over sultry diamond earrings. The person that wants this is the person who closely observes the understated playfulness to the collection.  Leaf’s inspiration from the Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away, is not one that brazenly jumps at you, but rather, lingers somewhere in your thoughts as familiar silhouettes, colours and prints make their way down the runway. Her clothes are walking collages of colours, blocks and most noticeably, massive spurts of graphic prints. The fabric used is scuba felt with patches of different fabrics - stiff, almost unmoving and uncompromising, but works in keeping the woman wearing the clothes perfectly contained, even in bursts of colour.

 

WHAT IT DOES TO THEM: Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is an animated film that leaves you feeling pleasantly haunted by it’s multi-faceted layers (seriousness, cheekiness, poignant moments). Leaf Xia’s clothes leave us feeling the same. It’s almost an extremely obvious choice to feel uplifted by the clothes. The colours are not ignorable – quite fitting, since the collection is titled, ‘I SEE YOU’. Hues repeated on the runway are blue, yellow, green and orange – but after a while, those feelings of spoon fed perkiness run their course. You begin to see the layers of a more complex tale, similar to the one that is told in the film. What seems like a cartoon movie about a little girl who moves to a new neighbourhood ends up reflecting heavier topics such as identity, the after life and a life that is simple and without riches.

 

WHAT’S THE CLIMAX?: The climax is the realisation that these seemingly cheery, beautiful, bright, collaged clothes come with an equal sense of authority and history, with regards to Studio Ghibli.  One who chooses to wear this is wearing many stories (which is what Leaf reflects with her use of material collages) and is also reflecting boldness and strength (which is reflected in the rigidness of the scuba material and block colours). The sex in this however, is not as easy to spot as it might be masked by the very cartoonish nature of the looks that are on the runway. It makes its appearance in the form of a brash, brazen, confidence – the clothes are wearing the models, they are evidently lost in them and in this situation, it is an absolutely brilliant thing.