Kenzo Launches Collaboration with Futura 2000

by Anna Barr

“When the opportunity came about to work with Nigo again, I was beyond excited. We first collaborated, in the last century, with various projects across multiple platforms. Nigo has always been extremely detailed with a discerning visual esthetic. As the current artistic director of KENZO, he asked me to submit designs based on my atomic elements that could play with the KENZO floral imagery. The possibilities of seeing my artwork, across a variety of fantastic pieces and outstanding fabrics, was super inspiring. It’s an absolute honor to work with Nigo again, I believe this collaboration is a celebration of our more than 25 year history, and friendship.” — Futura 2000

We saw Nigo team up with his longtime pal Futura2000 back in January. The legendary New York graffiti artist, and one of the founding figures of streetwear, with enduring cultural relevance contributed his distinctive calligraphy style to the Boke Flower and the KENZO Paris logo, two of the House’s most recognizable emblems. The KENZO Paris logo is altered through a raw, graffiti-style lens, while the Boke Flower is given new life by being infused with the artist’s urban visual language and loaded with movement and edge. Tradition and revolt boldly collide as a result with a stunning campaign shot by Japanese photographer Jiro Konami inside Futura’s New York atelier.

One of the collection’s highlights is a colorful all-over animation that combines the reinvented Boke Flower with Futura’s iconic Atom motif, creating a dynamic composition that honors mobility, energy, and metamorphosis. The collab also celebrates the cultural exchange between Tokyo and New York, which finds us meeting in the middle, here in Paris, reinforcing the notions of cross-cultural identity and the beautiful shapes and forms it can manifest in. Lenny aka Futura 2000, took the time to speak with us ahead of the exclusive launch.

Welcome back to Paris. What are you looking forward to in the city?

One is food, so tomorrow I’ll have my Rendezvous with my favorite little spot. It’s like a tradition every time we come to Paris, to the same place, and now, over four or five years.

What’s your go-to?

I’m flexible. I mean, I gotta start with the escargot of course, and any kind of boulangerie. You know, the city is just so beautiful, much like New York City, you just go walking, and there is so much to see, and then at night, Paris takes on another kind of look, I think more beautiful.

You are a well-renowned art figure, but you have had so many different jobs on this journey. At what point did you become interested in fashion?

From a point of view of high fashion, I’m late to the game, right? Because growing up, that was kind of out of my price point, but I think this all changed in this century when younger people were arriving with a little more sensibility about fashion. I’m more directly connected to a kind of streetwear community after graffiti. After 1991, we began to explore making t-shirts, hats, hoodies, a bag. We began pretty humble, low-budget, DIY-ish, but it also felt right because we felt like we were creatives. We came out of this other school. I called the graffiti movement like a kind of school, and then, as the 90s arrived….Oh wow, there’s a computer! I always liked graphics visually, whether it was advertising, or the logos for brands, and graphic design was some way to translate to clothing, to t-shirts. And so that was my beginning, for me, it’s a question of maybe we got there too soon. You know, we were ahead of our time anyway. We were in New York, only following what had been established by someone like Shawn Stussy in California, whom I respect immensely. I feel he’s an inspiration for me and our school, then ultimately, by the new millennium, I already met Nigo and I got a chance to go to Japan.

How did you meet?

It was 30 years ago, it’s the most random event. When I met Nigo, I didn’t know who I was meeting, well, he hadn’t become the eagle that we all know. He was just a young Japanese creative, visionary, kind of producer, director, but he already knew about me. I was just walking down the street in Japan and met this young guy in the street, who was working with Nigo, he saw me and he’s wearing a hat that I had made, but he had modified it and made it uniquely his own product. He’s like “I’m a big fan. I want to introduce you to my friend Nigosan” and that’s how it happened. After that chance meeting, I got invited to create a t-shirt, and that’s the beginning. It was just the beginning, and frankly, the West needed Japan to enlighten us because we were all doing Western things in the way we think and you come back from an experience there working with them and you understand professionalism, quality attention to detail, you know, just levels that we were not. We were not there yet. We were kind of taking breaks, just anything but working. And these guys were doing nothing but working. I appreciated that and I changed immediately. I went back home, and I said “Guys, we have to up our game. You know, these guys are on it hard.” All of my Japanese friends are the highlight for me in helping me get to the next chapter.

I wanted to also ask you, because your work spans more than five decades, how has the art world changed? You’re so lucky to have seen how things were in the 70s, 80s.

I’m grateful that the art world is looking at me again because I did have a moment in the 80s, I was with a good gallery in New York where Basquiat, Haring, and Warhol showed, this was a great era and I was there. I kind of had a cup of coffee, right? And then I was gone. But I’m back and, and I’m only back, because going from fashion street, the art world and the street art world really kicked in in the late 90s. In the year 2000, I feel this century was the birth of yeah, the elevation of all that. There are so many artists right now, and all of this community has helped elevate me a bit, because now, you’re right, I am the guy that. And you know now, it looks like the world’s conspiring to get me into a great place.