Discover the preview of Maison Kitsuné Spring / Summer 2012 women’s collection designed by Masaya Kuroki.

Inspiration text by Thomas Erber :

I first met Budd Schulberg not long before he passed away on 5th August 2005. The controversial author of, among others, ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ and the screenplay of ‘On The Waterfront’ (not forgetting he was behind Nicholas Ray’s cult movie ‘Wind Across The Everglades’), was 95 year old and the son of a Hollywood mogul at the heydays of the L.A. Studios.
We had lunch in his Hamptons house where he had retreated to quietly end his eventful life (at times criticized by some).
I was meeting him for two reasons. The first is of no importance here, contrarily to the second: talking about his most revered book, the one with the rather fitting title. ‘The Disenchanted’, novel in which the author recounts the experience he genuinely shared with Scott Fitzgerald – attempting to rescue him at a time when the latter in the last stage of his life was revisiting his past.

Luckily it’s not that Fitzgerald, Masaya Kuroki took inspiration from to create his new summer collection which all the aesthetes will swoon over next year. But the one who, at the height of his existence, was writing his most famous novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ in which he magnificently and facetiously orchestrated himself under the guise of his legendary character Jay Gatsby, East coast icon and Long Island prince with the whole of New York at his feet.
It must be said that at this moment in his life, a bit like another famous writer after him with a similar infamous lifestyle, Truman Capote, Fitzgerald has grace in his blood, class all over. And his flamboyance only matches the diaphanous light of a June sunshine blazing Montauk’s beach grass similarly forewarning an imminent slump.
Infinite parties in fenceless villas where champagne would flow over silky sofas, you’d judge a book by its cover and you’d flaunt it then. Director Jack Clayton got it all spot on when he took the book to the screen in 1974, following closely Francis Ford Coppola’s script and judiciously picking up – was there ever another possible option? – Robert Redford then at the prime of his timeless charm (as Ron Galella’s set pictures testify) – to portray the 20th century’s biggest dandy.

On paper or on reel, no one can still argue to this day that rarely elegance and casualness have rhymed so well with placing into infinity an era that has never stopped making us dream. A solid impression that remains and prevails long after having carefully detailed each piece of Maison Kitsuné’s new collection.