“As always, she wakes up just before the alarm goes off.
…Yes, that’s her.
40 years old, mother of one, single, working.
To herself, she’s always the same, sometimes more tired, that’s all.
…She makes her face, not much, just a bit around the eyes.
But she always puts on lipstick.
…She prepares breakfast for her son.
For herself, just a cup of coffee.
…Efficient, cool, calm and collected.
…Everybody respects her, but nobody really knows her.
…She likes her job.
She has worked in this law firm for several years.
By now, she has her own office and can close the door, if she wants to.
Most of her co-workers are men.
Sometimes, a few of them meet on the terrace for a break
and she has a cigarette with them.
…She would never buy cigarettes or have them at home.
When she turns off her computer at the end of the day, she also turns off her mind from all these legal matters.
They’re no longer part of her.
She never brings work home…
…She likes Glenn Gould.
…Then, at home, her son has to do his homework, while she buys groceries, or, once a week, does the washing.
She loves staring at the washing machine as if it was a TV set.
Or watching the remote-controlled vacuum cleaner do its work.
…Then the boy goes to bed and she kisses him good night.
…And now, she has a couple of hours for herself.
…She corresponds regularly with a lot of people.
… Then she goes to bed, but, as always, reads for another couple of hours.
She loves reading, always several books at the same time.
There are stacks and stacks of them by her bedside.
Philosophy, poetry, but novels, too, mostly thrillers or murder mysteries…”
–
This is the abridged version of Wim Wenders’ poem, Watching a Working Woman, and the soundtrack which guides us through Jun Takashi’s latest collection.
The identity of the modern woman is marked by an inescapable voyeurism and romanticism that Wenders captures well. A woman who transitions seamlessly from one role to another. She is content in her routine which she executes with general ease. She seems to have more hours in the day than the rest of us. It’s a very nouvelle-vague vision of the working woman that sounds closer to purgatory than to liberating the second sex. I’m not sure it’s meant to be satirical but this portrait is so poetic that I’m not sure this woman actually exists. The clothes on the other hand, they exist. They are practically practical, constructed from simple and common fabrics with pops of fun- i.e. light wash mom jeans lined in gold garland. Or, a simple white t-shirt framed with flowing floral silk turns into an elegant dress framed with flowing floral silk. Sleek leather shoulder bags are stamped with silver spikes.
Models cart shopping bags down the runway stuffed with flowers, bread, groceries, yoga mats. Contrasting materials and patterns like silk and denim, lightweight knits and leather, or fur and floral chiffon are pieced together and incorporated into each other, mimicking the coexisting complexities of feminine identity. Layers on layers of poetry and fabric.
As always, a pleasure.
