An abundance of flowers, a festival of colors, a mixture of East and West … this, of course, is Kenzo, the always-distinctive fashion designer.Kenzo’s philosophy is straightforward and honest. According to Kenzo, the world is beautiful. With Kenzo, influences of ethnic cultures make their entrances and exits as the seasons unfold. Kenzo creates clothes that tell stories, for women who love freedom and authenticity and are always questing for originality. Kenzo is essential to a woman’s lifestyle. The Kenzo philosophy is created to reflect her ease, social mobility and confidence.

Kenzo Takada was born in Kyoto, in the Hyogo region of Southern Japan in 1940. Dissatisfied with the literature studies prescribed by his traditional innkeeper parents, he went to Tokyo, where he worked as a house painter and took evening classes in studio art.

In 1958 he joined the predominantly female student body of the Bunka Gakuen School of Fashion. In 1960 he won a Japanese fashion award, the prestigious Soen prize. He began working for the Sanai department store as a designer of girl’s clothing, making up to 40 styles every month.

In 1964 Kenzo moved to Paris. He took some time to settle in, but eventually he started sketching. The revolutionary new outfits by Courreges were the inspiration for a series of 30 designs he made, 5 of which were accepted by designer Louis Feraud. Over the next few years, he worked for various departmental stores, the Pisanti textile group and Relations Textiles.

In 1970 Kenzo took over a former antique clothing store in disrepair and painted it himself. Then cutting and sewing a collection of his own designs, he took them round to the fashion magazines. By November he had moved to 28 passage Choiseul and almost immediately his clothes started attracting notice. A boutique in the Galeria Vivienne gave him the chance to introduce his own style to Parisiennes.

He opened his own boutique called “Jungle Jap” selling loose casual clothes, smock tent dresses, and huge striped dungarees with elephant legs. He enlarged armholes and changed the shoulder shape and introduced 100% cotton fabrics. His predilection is for simplified child-like shapes like pullover vests, knee length shorts, mini coats, sweater dresses, made fresh by such foreign nuances as Kimono sleeves (unusual in knitted clothing) and oversized berets. He follows the principle of flat patterns like used for kimonos. In 1971 Jungle Jap designs were featured in American Vogue as the next development in the Paris boutique scene. In 1972 Kenzo’s show at the Gare d’Orsay was very successful.

In 1975 his first collections were shown in Tokyo. In 1977 he presented his collections in New York. In 1978 he became known as the “Great White designer” although his designs were very colourful indeed and his styles amazingly diverse. In1979 his collection was shown in Zurich for the first time. His motifs are flowers and leaves, even his perfume bottle is a leaf. He likes animal prints, tartans and daring colour combinations.

Considered a Wunderkind and celebrity in 1970s fashion, Kenzo never fixed on one look, but preferred to view fashion as a creative, continuous adventure. Shyly, Kenzo said in 1978, “It pleases me when people say I have influence. But I am influenced by the world that says I influence it. The world I live in is my influence.” Other influences include American popular culture: Chinese tunics and wrappings, especially at the low-swung waist, batiks of East Asia, Indian trousers, Bedouin blankets, Breton aprons, Spanish boleros, European peasant aprons and smocks, and Japanese woven textiles. For his 40th birthday, the designer became Minnie Mouse.

In 1986 Kenzo Takada called his menswear collection “Around the World in Eighty Days,” but that expedition had long been underway in Kenzo’s clothes for women and men. Significantly, for more than 20 years, Kenzo has been the most prominent traveler in fashion but also the most multicultural and the most syncretistic, insisting on the diversity and compatibility of ethnic styles and cultural options from all parts of the world. Kenzo has steadfastly mixed styles. This Japanese tourist has rightly perceived and selected from all cultures and styles. In February 1978 he told Women’s Wear Daily, “I like to use African patterns and Japanese patterns together.” Kenzo interprets style and specific costume elements of various parts of the world, assimilating them into a peaceful internationalism more radical than other designers.

In 1988, his women’s perfume line began with Kenzo de Kenzo, Parfum D’été, Le Monde Est Beau and L’Eau Par Kenzo. Kenzo Pour Homme was his first men’s perfume (1991).

When asked by Joan Quinn about travels and ethnic clothing, Kenzo replied: “I prefer to travel only for vacations. I don’t go around looking for influences. The energy arrives.” In fact, Kenzo serves as “the prototype of the young designer, the designer with a sense of humor about fashion, culture, and life, as well as a lively curiosity about clothing itself,” as Caroline Milbank described, precisely because his theme collections and almost volcanic change imply a continuous stream of ideas. Kenzo, after all, emerged first as a designer of poor-boy-style skinny sweaters.

In addition, Kenzo has been fascinated by painting, drawing upon Wassily Kandinsky and David Hockney for inspiration, as well as calligraphy. His pallet has always been internationally vibrant, filled with ethnic eruptions, play of pattern, and unorthodox color combinations. Kenzo’s work, in fact, argues strongly for the harmony of cultural influences, the most disparate and distinct expressions of dress coming together in the styles of a designer who has himself raised barbed issues of ethnicity by insisting upon “Jap” for his early collections, encouraging a racist pejorative to be converted into a positive identity.

By the early 1990s, Kenzo’s company, which boasted 37 boutiques worldwide and 124 sales outlets, was acquired by the LVMH (Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton) family, quickly becoming LVMH’s second-largest fashion house after Louis Vuitton. LVMH also owns Loewe, Celine, and Christian Dior. Plans for the Kenzo brand included branching into home furnishings and launching a new sportswear line called Kenzo Ki (Ki is Kenji for “energy”).

Kenzo announced his retirement in 1999 and celebrated his 30-year career with a stadium celebration that included a Kenzo retrospective and his final collection, spring-summer 2000. Kenzo was replaced by head designers Gilles Rosier for womenswear and Roy Krejberg for menswear. Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune called Rosier’s first show, for fall-winter 2000-2001, “one of the smoothest and successful transitions of recent seasons.” In 2005, Kenzo reappeared as a decoration designer presenting “Gokan Kobo” (”workshop of the five senses”), a brand of tableware, home objects and furniture.

Even with its namesake in retirement, the Kenzo brand continues to grow. In 2001 the company added a new fragrance, Flower by Kenzo to its line, and the company sought a new generation of Kenzo devotees with the launch of Kenzo Kids. Marketing director Timothy Yoong told Singapore’s Straits Times that “anyone willing to pay $1,000 for a suit won’t mind buying three to four items from the same brand for their children.”