Collaborating since 2001 as mint designs, Japanese designers Hokuto Katsui and Nao Yagi have been making refreshing, pure and refined garment creations. Both graduates from the prestigious Central Saint Martins School of Design in London, mint designs are winners of the 2005 Moet & Chandon New Designers’ Award and obtained the Mainichi Fashion Award in 2010, placing them side-to-side with the winners of previous years, among which are Japanese influential designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. Such achievement established them as the most talk-about new fashion talents in the Asian scene.
Their unique creative approach is focused on pattern innovation achieved through‘fortuitous errors’ and ‘accidental’ aesthetics emerging during the processes of conception. By allowing ‘mistakes’ to guide their pattern designs, or even manufacture, they believe it is possible to transcend the traditional framework of fashion design. Drawing inspiration from these processes, the exhibition ‘Happy Mistake!–Pattern on Pattern’ explores the achievements of mint designs over the past decade, and in particular their contribution towards producing diversity, innovation and entertainment in contemporary fashion.