-Recent 2018 LVMH Prize Winner Masayuki Ino has always approached garments with a sense of playful irreverence -To Ino, garments are not simply garments—rather, they serve as sites to challenge our perceptions of what is supposed to go where, how we relate to what we wear, and how we relate as consumers to the fashion industry at large. -Ino has sold flat folded garments encased in plastic as part of his exploration on the role of “deadstock.” The ‘unwrapping’ of the garment becomes an event that irrevocably transforms the piece. Some parts of the plastic rip off, other parts with their printed decoration, unexpectedly remain stuck onto the fabric itself. At the end of the undeadstocking ritual, the garment ends its life as a boxfresh consumer product and begins its life as a piece of clothing, to be worn, washed, and lived in. And although the shirt is now unfolded and liberated, it still carries with it graphic and material traces from its life in its ‘packaging.’ -Here, Ino takes the act of slapping on stickers and cements it. No longer the temporary graphic imprint that wears away quickly, the ‘sticker’ patches on these pants are given permanence in their jacquard fabrication. Littered on the pants just like they’d be stuck on any flat urban building surface, the self-referential graphics opine towards the youthful act of making your mark with a sticker.
