An Evening of Duck, Cocktails, and Elegant Austerity with Matohu

Because feasting on duck and champagne next to a coal pit is just so Fall, we attended the Matohu spring '09 collection presentation held last night at Nouveau Pr headquarters. Japanese designers Makiko Sekiguchi and Hiroyuki Horihata are the husband and wife team behind Matohu, which uses 600-year-old hand-dyeing techniques on Dries-Van-Noten-like deconstructed, conceptual pieces and traditional Kimono-esque styles. Matohu is currently part of the Sakai City Industrial Promotion Bureau, a government design initiative that supports the development of young designers and businesses, collaborations between industry and academia, and Neo-Japanese Modernism in the global market. Among those sipping Christiania Vodka, Sei water, and Sapporos were Meredith Melling Burke of Vogue, artist Rita Ackermann, Jason Farrer Tokion, and Renata of Espinosa FWD. Chatting under rice paper lanterns with designers Andrew Harmon, Kai Kuhne (who informed us it was his birthday) and Louis Terline from Oak NY was quite nice—but most of our evening was spent planning ways we too could be supported by Sakai, combining their concepts of "mottainai" (waste nothing, in Japanese) and "wabisabi" (elegant austerity) with our already exceptional accessorizing, drinking, and lounging abilities.