Quiet But Radical Defiance
In the history of fashion, light has long played the role of a supporting character, an agent of enhancement, dramatization, and visibility. Whether through runway spotlights, studio flashes, or ambient installations, light has typically been an external force acting upon clothing. But Kunihiko Morinaga’s SCREEN collection for Anrealage reverses this hierarchy entirely. Here, light is no longer in service of fashion, it is fashion. Not projected, but emitted. Not illustrative, but intrinsic.
The garments in SCREEN are woven with LED-integrated yarns and powered by embedded circuits that allow light to pulse, flow, and transform across the fabric’s surface. This fusion of electronics and textile transforms clothing from a static object into a dynamic display, a mutable surface that displays information, emotion, and time itself. What we witness is not fabric catching the light, but fabric generating light. This shift is not merely technological; it is conceptual. It challenges centuries of assumptions about how we see, wear, and understand clothes.
What is remarkable about this approach is its ability to collapse boundaries, not just between material and immaterial, but between observer and observed. The garments do not present a fixed visual identity; instead, they operate in flux. Colors morph, patterns dissolve, pulses sync and break. Each piece resists singularity. There is no final form. No image to capture. The body becomes a relay for a system in motion, one that feels algorithmic, organic, and strangely human.
The brilliance of this work lies not only in its novelty, but in its refusal to settle. It resists commodification. Unlike traditional garments, which are designed to be archived, sold, and remembered, SCREEN exists to disappear. It is anti-memory, anti-branding, anti-static. This ephemeral quality may be its most radical gesture in an era of fashion dominated by Instagram, product drops, and the obsessive pursuit of permanence.
Still, SCREEN is not simply a futuristic experiment; it is a philosophical proposal. It asks: what if fashion didn’t just express who we are, but changed as we changed? What if it responded not to the gaze of others, but to the inner rhythm of thought, memory, and time? What if light was not something added to fashion, but something fashioned?
Morinaga’s answer is poetic, defiant, and deeply timely. In a world obsessed with visibility, with fixed identities and algorithmic optimization, SCREEN introduces a fashion of disappearance, a fashion of flux. And in doing so, it reminds us that light, in its purest form, is not just what lets us see. It is what lets us transform.
Brands : Anrealage Co, MPLUSPLUS
Designer : Kunihiko Morinaga
Photo Credits : Koji Hirano
