How Japanese Rain Inspired Canada Goose’s New Capsule Collection for Spring
Sponsored StoryMother Nature is the original muse. And if anything has defined Canada Goose, it’s as a brand that devotes itself to finding ways of working with her when she’s at her harshest (or rather, clothing people so they can best take Mother Nature’s temperamental moods on themselves).
As spring starts in the northern hemisphere, Canada Goose has applied its technical know-how to protecting against the element that most defines the season of new beginnings. The result is Nomad, a four-piece capsule and the first ever collection developed for the Spring/Summer season, launching with a campaign that’s inspired by the country whose culture is most heavily influenced by it: spring, rain, and the island nation of Japan.
Nomad, a four-piece capsule collection for Spring/Summer 2019, marks the new beginning — and Highsnobiety has partnered with Canada Goose to tell its story. From the shoot with artists Kouichi Okamoto and Aoi Yamaguchi in Japanese wildernesses (both urban and rural) through to experiencing their elementally-inspired work at Milan Design Week, we’ll be there to celebrate a new chapter in Canada Goose’s history and the season that started it.
Watch the film:
The Nomad Collection
Nature hasn’t just affected how we dress, it’s also influenced how we speak. It is actually true and not just an urban myth that the Inuit and Yupik peoples have over 100 words for snow; Scotland has 421 terms for its harsh North Atlantic winter. Japan, meanwhile, has 50 words for rain.
With terms and concepts ranging from the profound (tenkyuu; rain from a cloudless sky) to the poetic (yau; night rain) and then the purely explanatory (juuu; refreshing rain once in ten days), if nothing else, the amount of Japanese words for precipitation shows how much it and the season that comes with it is intertwined with the nation’s culture. Which made it the perfect place to showcase the Nomad capsule. Shot on location on the streets of Tokyo with calligrapher and artist Aoi Yamaguchi and in the mountains of Wakayama prefecture with sound and product designer, artist, and music producer Kouichi Okamoto, the capsule adapts to its surroundings as much as it does to the artists using it. Engineered with GORE-TEX tech paired with over 60 years of outerwear know-how from Canada Goose, the capsule encompases the Nomad Jacket and the Nomad HyBridge Lite Jacket. Designed to work as a system, but equally useful worn separately, the Nomad Jacket is a waterproof and breathable rainshell, cut slim with mesh venting underneath the back panel and underarm for airflow.
Meanwhile, the quilted Nomad HyBridge Lite Jacket is a lightweight, water-resistant piece for insulation and warmth (should spring switch back and turn cold), while offering light protection against rain and utilizing strategically placed Tensile-Tech fabric for movement. A handy utility feature means it can be packed into its exterior left pocket.
"As the seasons change, so does the rain. The rain changes according to the season and the topography, almost having its own personality that Japanese people relate to."
Kouichi OkamotoThe capsule drops exclusively in the Canada Goose Sendagaya store in Tokyo from April 5 before releasing globally and online April 8.
For more info on Nomad, check out this page soon on how you can experience the Nomad collection personally plus more info on where to buy, and an exclusive interview with Japanese creative polymath Kouichi Okamoto.
Experiencing the Nomad Collection
To explore the ideas that brought the collection to life, Canada Goose has taken their work with Kouichi Okamoto a step further. Exploring water and the vital role rain plays in all life on earth, Okamoto and Canada Goose have created an immersive installation at next week’s Milan Design Week.
Open to the public — sign up available here — the four-part installation, encompassing ink, sound, rain, and specifically created for the event, uses hydrochromatic ink to reveal the effects of water across time and surfaces. "My main motif is to explore elements that seem invisible, abstract and unexplainable," explains Okamoto. "I am inspired by sound, by light, by the earth’s gravity, magnetic force and the atmosphere that surrounds it […] In my work, I find ways to embody rain and express my fascination for these invisible elements." A creative polymath, Okamoto has always been an artist. First working as a sound designer and music producer, he has been consistently releasing work on Dutch techno label "X-Trax" since the mid-90s. Turning his hand to product design work in 2004, he started Kyouei Design with Ayako Nakanishi and Yuichi Yamaguchi in 2006. His most recent work: releasing the FR-shelter tent as part of his outdoor brand "Field Record", developed under the Kyouei Design umbrella. So, the man knows the outdoors and the elements.
To explore the ideas that brought the collection to life, Canada Goose has taken their work with Kouichi Okamoto a step further. Exploring water and the vital role rain plays in all life on earth, Okamoto and Canada Goose have created an immersive installation at next week’s Milan Design Week.
However, it was while on shoot for the Nomad collection in Wakayama that his groundbreaking installation with Canada Goose really took shape. "I felt the rain physically and my ears woke up to the sounds of rain as if for the first time," Okamoto says. "Wakayama as a word summarizes what I felt about being there on set. “wa” represents harmony, “ka” represents “songs” and “Yama” means mountain. The meaning of Wakayama itself embodies the place in which the mountain sings in harmony".
Check out Canada Goose to X. If you can’t be there in person, we’ll be there on the ground to capture it in person. For more on Nomad, check out this page soon for how you can purchase the collection, plus an exclusive interview with Kouichi and a look inside the artwork itself.
How Canada Goose Translated 50 Japanese Words For Rain for Milan Design Week
Early April and the weather in Milan is hot, hinting at the summer to come. In the heart of Zona Tortona in the west of the Italian city, just off the Via Savona and hidden away in a courtyard behind a yellowing 19th century building, a familiar but — given the hot cloudless azure sky above — unusual sound patters, hisses, and hums its way out to the street: it’s the sound of rain.
The sound greets you as you walk through a darkened tunnel playing Canada Goose’s cinematic Nomad film shot in Wakayama prefecture (the one that gazes onto the iconic Mount Fuji) and the island nation’s capital, Tokyo. As that film loops across three eight-foot LED walls, the sound of rain loops from 25 tracks playing from a collection of precise directional micro-speakers directed down onto a mix of kids and adults, most of them with wooden buckets in their hands and throwing water onto the yard’s white walls, revealing pearly gray Japanese script (that can be translated when you hold up your phone camera) while the water trickles down. On the other side of a crumbling stone partitioning wall is a huge gleaming mirrored box that houses the four Nomad jackets — two for women, two for men — hanging over a pool of clear, still water.
Created by Canada Goose in close collaboration with Japanese sound and product designer Kouichi Okamoto, the entire space has just opened that morning for Milan Design Week. It is both tranquil and peaceful yet playful and free, as if anything can happen there. It’s also pretty popular with dozens of stlyish Milanese hanging out there in the shade (and it’s not even lunch time). "I’ve never done something this interactive before," explains Okamoto to me as people experience his and Canada Goose’s space below. "One thing is that of course I want people to see the words surrounding rain in Japanese culture, which is very normal to me, but very, I guess, foreign to them. Having that cultural experience is one thing that I want them to immerse themselves in. "The other is the whole theme of randomness. Rain is random in itself and accidental. The sounds that are in the installation, the directional speakers, you hear different sounds depending on the place you’re in in the venue, and also the words, you splash the water on the wall, and by chance you see this thing emerge which you can touch, a certain word that you get to know the meaning of. This whole theme is randomness. I guess that, and chance, is something that I want people to actually feel."
A creative polymath, Okamoto has always been an artist, governed by senses and the outdoors. First working as a sound designer and music producer, he has been consistently releasing work on Dutch techno label X-Trax since the mid-90s. Turning his hand to product design work in 2004, he started Kyouei Design with Ayako Nakanishi and Yuichi Yamaguchi in 2006. His most recent work: releasing the FR-shelter tent as part of his outdoor brand "Field Record", developed under the Kyouei Design umbrella. However, it was while on shoot for the Nomad collection in Wakayama that his groundbreaking installation with Canada Goose really took shape. He was only there originally to be in the film, recording sounds and testing out the jackets.
"With the shooting in Wakayama in December, it then progressed into this whole installation opportunity. [It started] after talking during the shoot about an idea I had of an art piece using water, and that then just became this," he smiles. A few months later, and what started off a conversation is real. Okamoto seems surprised by it, but Japen, spring, the jackets, the outdoors — it all seems to make sense. "In Japan — I don’t know about other countries — but April is the start of spring and that’s when everything starts. Just for example, school starts, companies start new projects, it’s the start of a new year for Japan. It’s the start of a new life, a new living, a new lifestyle." Cop the Canada Goose’s new major project, the Nomad capsule collection for spring 2019 below. Follow Canada Goose on Instagram below for more outdoor inspo.
Shop the Nomad Collection
- Project Manager: Elise de Villaine
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