Tokyo-based Sacai as led by Chitose Abe has released a spring 2021 collection featuring a campaign celebrating rule breakers made in collaboration with Brooklyn artist Hank Willis Thomas.
Introduced through a mutual friend in Japan, Abe and Thomas began working together in spring of last year, an effort that took shape in the midst of a global pandemic and protests over racial injustice.
In press on the effort Thomas explained, “We were all in need of love and we wanted to put something in the minds of the consumers that would encourage them to think about higher responsibilities.”
The campaign is titled “Love Over Rules,” a reference to Thomas’s 2017 neon sculpture of the same name, a tribute to his cousin Songha Willis, who was murdered in 2000. The words were his last ones recorded in a music session.
Images feature Thomas and his wife, curator Rujeko Hockley, as well as jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, dancer Mizuho Kappa, artist Zoë Buckman, designer and human rights advocate Céline Semaan Vernon, jazz pianist Jason Moran and artist and activist Chella Man.
In addition to highlighting the spring collection, the campaign is meant to “celebrate those who have broken the rules to defy society’s expectations, regardless of race, culture or gender.”
Made in part of archival Sachai fabric, offerings are now available at Bergdorf Goodman here.
