An Interview with Kenzo Takada

A Second Career
By: Godfrey Deeny
May 16, 2002/ FWD/ -- F. Scott Fitzgerald may have decried the possibility of a second career in American public life, but there is apparently no such term limit in France.
Take Kenzo Takada, for example, who just had an extremely jolly lunch Wednesday in Paris to celebrate the debut of what looks like a promising new business.
"It's a new departure, and one I always expected to make someday," said Takada, standing beside a Japanese pond brimming with exotic fish on the roof of his delightful Asian-influenced home nestled in the center of an old Bastille building, of his new "maison."
Called Yume (that's Japanese for dream), the line will include a series of men's and women's apparel and accessories, as well as bed linens for La Redoute, Europe's biggest mail order group. Yume also marks the end of the designer's three-year retirement.
"You wouldn't believe the stuff that the French press wrote about me when I decided to take a break. They said I had gone into permanent retirement in Japan. Huh! The truth is I never left Paris, and always intended to come back," Kenzo confided.
"I still have this great desire to create things," he continued, dressed in a lean navy pinstripe suit, tanned, and looking easily a decade younger than his 63 years.
"I've enjoyed traveling, reflecting about things and letting my spirit soar these last few years and now I'm ready to attack this project."
For La Redoute, which prints 11 million catalogues per season and boasts 1.5 billion Euros in annual sales, Kenzo dreamed up bed linen with Japanese floral motifs, slick new ergonomic sneakers and aged silver metal, all of which capture Takada's trademark blend of the naive and practical.
And, aside from a multi-colored floral scarf, none of the creations looked overly "Kenzo."
The Kenzo-ness of the project is indeed an issue for this new venture, which has created quite a stir in Paris: luxury group LVMH, helmed by Bernard Arnault, owns the house Kenzo founded in 1970; La Redoute is controlled by PPR, the main business arm of French billionaire and Arnault rival Francois Pinault.
In the end, ill feeling seems to have been avoided by Kenzo selling a stake in Yume to LVMH, though its exact size remains something of a mystery.
"It's a minority minority stake," insisted Pierre Levy, the experienced luxury goods executive that Kenzo has chosen as his managing director.
"Clearly, our goal is not to cause LVMH a lot of irritation by repeating ideas from the past. That wouldn't make any sense," said Levy, cautioning that the designer will especially concentrate on goods for the home.
The splendid lunch Takada hosted Wednesday featured some of his first creations -- elegant sake decanters in faux bamboo.
The meal, prepared by his personal chef Toyo, would have made Lucullus envious: tomatoes stuffed with turbot and caviar, eggplant with marinated beef and mullet with baby asparagus, all served in a dining room decorated with Jean Michel Basquiat paintings, Directoire candelabras and a Gotha of statues representing gods from a score of cultures.
Takada is known for grandly generous gestures, like covering the Pont Neuf in flowers. But while such dramatic presentations are well within his ken, and with La Redoute in the habit of producing mini-collections each season with established and media-catching designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel and Stella McCartney, Kenzo said he has no immediate plans for a catwalk show.
"No, right now that sounds kind of complicated and heavy," he laughed.