Anrealage's 25th Paris Collection Reimagines Fashion

Anrealage's 25th Paris collection, titled 'SKIN', debuted with garments made from electronic paper pixels that change color, vanish as ash, and return. The Spring/Summer 2027 show was unveiled alongside the retrospective exhibition 'JUST AN REAL AGE' during Paris Fashion Week. In the 'SKIN' show, clothes lose color on the runway, turn to ash, and then color returns on the same runway. This marks a thematic evolution from the brand's 2016 'Reflect' collection.

Founder Kunihiko Morinaga states that technology has matured. Ten years ago, light-reactive material could only be made with a cotton-like hand. Today it can become fur or velvet. In 'SKIN', garments are made from scale-shaped pieces of electronic paper, each thirty millimeters across. These are called 'pixels'. Each garment contains one thousand to two thousand pixels. Morinaga notes this number is almost the same as the number of fabric scraps in his 2014 patchwork collection. He states the origin of the pixel concept was patchwork, a realization he only had after the 'SKIN' collection was finished.

Technology Meets Craft

Morinaga explains how modern light-reactive materials have evolved. He says when he started Anrealage in Tokyo in 2003, technology felt far away. It was a tool to make the overlooked wondrous. That core belief remains. What has changed is the material's potential. The E Ink Prism technology used in the exhibition allows electronic paper elements to change color. Select designs from the SKIN collection demonstrate this. Morinaga references the sewing machine as once being new technology. His work continues that lineage of innovation.

Doraemon Inspiration and Retail Curation

The exhibition's retail component reflects playful, multidimensional storytelling. It features a special collaboration between ANREALAGE and DORAEMON for the FW24 collection, described as floating clothes-objects. Morinaga states he loved science fiction as a child, especially Fujiko F. Fujio's Doraemon. The character pulling gadgets from a four-dimensional pocket inspired him. He wanted to give people that feeling through clothing.

The retail space is organized by Sarah Andelman's 'SHOP' concept. It uses the 26 letters of the alphabet. Each letter corresponds to an object, collaboration, or discovery, alongside a selection of Anrealage ready-to-wear.

The collaboration brings together Anrealage’s focus on technology transforming clothing and Andelman’s approach to curation. Among the offerings is SONGS FOR ANREALAGE, a vinyl release featuring two tracks composed by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk. The vinyl is for the label’s Fall 2025 SCREEN collection and its Spring 2026 collection created with Heralbony.

Morinaga explains the name ANREALAGE. It is a mash-up of 'a real', 'unreal', and 'age'. The 'AN' is borrowed from the indefinite article to suggest the everyday and extraordinary sit just a little apart. He gives examples: a white garment turns colourful when stepping outside, or the air around people shifts just a little.

Exhibition Experience

The 'JUST AN REAL AGE' retrospective opened in Paris on October 1 at Galerie Perrotin. It is free and open to the public, running from October 2 through October 5. The exhibition features 25 of Kunihiko Morinaga’s Paris collections, spanning from Spring 2015’s SHADOW to Spring 2027’s SKIN.

An educational section allows visitors to examine and handle material samples from past collections. A darkened projection room revisits runway experiments through programmed sequences of shifting colors, patterns, and light. One immersive installation features a mechanical arm interacting with a long white faux-fur coat that appears to progressively turn pink. Another explores movement and optical transformation through rotating three-dimensional dresses and garments covered in screen-like scales that change according to electronic programming.

Looks from the 25 Paris collections are displayed on a rotating platform. Designs include a jacket shaped into a perfect sphere and a dress that stands upright as a pyramid. Some dresses feature programmable LEDs developed with Tokyo tech studio MPLUSPLUS. These LED-equipped dresses once flickered through glitchy pixels and stained-glass patterns down the aisle of the American Cathedral in Paris.

Sarah Andelman, who collaborated on the retrospective through her consultancy Just An Idea, first saw the SS 2016 Reflect collection at Palais de Tokyo in 2015 while running Colette. She is a fan of Japanese brands including Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, sacai, and Doublet. Andelman says ANREALAGE remains in a special place due to each collection having a theme and a unique balance between technology and craftsmanship.

Kunihiko Morinaga was shortlisted for the LVMH Prize. ANREALAGE became the first Japanese designer partnered with FENDI. Its designs were worn by Beyoncé across two of her world tours and it designed the look of the heroine in Mamoru Hosoda's anime film Belle. The brand's history is one of consistent technological inquiry. In 2014, its first Paris show featured two models in white whose clothes turned grey under light, with only the overlapped areas remaining white as a trace.

Morinaga reflects on this journey. "What hasn’t changed is that I am still trying to create the moment when clothing transforms on the runway," he said. The exhibition closes on an immersive note. In one installation, a mechanical arm interacts with a white faux-fur coat that progressively turns pink.