Tokyo Gamine: Mode Brut Spotlight
Photo by Richard Van
Meet designer Yuka Uehara of Tokyo Gamine
Working at the intersection of design, community, and haute couture, San Francisco-based artist and fashion designer, Yuka Uehara is known for hand painting each of her designs, adding personalization and specificity to each piece of her brand Tokyo Gamine.
For her Mode Brut collection at Museum of Craft and Design, Uehara partnered with Creativity Explored artists Yah Kakabutra, Hung Kei Shiu, Anne Slater, Marcus McClure, Emma Reyes, Cheryle Rutledge, Taneya Lovelace, Yukari Sakura, Zachary Adams, and the late José Campos.
The Tokyo Gamine collection for Mode Brut explores natural elements and focuses on patterns found in the Creativity Explored artists’ work. Combining the textures of abstract paintings with intricate fabric forms, her designs evoke a mythical quality, imbued with psychic elemental energy.
Tokyo Gamine combines geometric shapes to help express the natural elements found in these CE artists’ works. The pieces in Mode Brut explore the idea of oneness from both chaos and harmony in the natural world - drawing from Eastern cosmologies. Attempting to simulate the creation and destruction of the cosmos, the installation draws upon the subconscious and spirit while referencing the natural elements of wood, earth, fire, metal, and water.
“The [Creativity Explored] artists’ creations are personal and inspiring to the senses. I put together the fashion collection almost instantaneously in my mind. This featured collection explores the idea of oneness from chaos and harmony found in the natural world and each piece highlights a natural element expressed through a combination of geometric shapes.”
Photo by Henrik Kam
Photo by Rob Williamson
We asked Uehara why she was inspired to work with these specific artists:
“Yah Kakabutra’s work gives an impression that we are fully submerged in water. Within various mythologies and modes of psychoanalysis, which I have been studying, water represents the subconscious, and I felt by experiencing her work I was experiencing a strong pull into the subconscious. Hung Kei Shiu’s use of color and shape takes me to a forest in spring – where I can feel the eagerness and overwhelming nature of new life.
Marcus Mcclure’s abstract use of circles is like a ring of fire. Fire represents transformation in Greek and other mythologies. Anne Slater’s paintings of flowers are as delightful as summer in full bloom. Emma Reyes’s and Cheryl Ruttledge’s work brings you the warmth of a plain where animals relax on a flower field on a midsummer day.
Taneya Lovelace’s work triggers olfactory sensations in me, almost like smelling metal, gas, and dust. It is how I imagine the primordial life on Earth to be. Metal also coincidentally correlates to the autumnal season of harvest in ancient Chinese cosmology. The works of the late José Campos gently captured the subtle despondence we feel as we transition from fall to winter—the big stretch we take as we prepare for a long sleep. Yukari Sakura’s vivid and stylized way of visually expressing a mythological tale provoked a common ancestral familiarity.”
In 2020, Yuka Uehara created Tokyo Gamine Gallery in order to collaborate with Japanese ceramic artists and potters. The project seeks to re-examine our relationships with the objects we consume.
The label has been seen on many red carpet events such as San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and Ballet openings and balls and several film events such as the Academy Awards. Tokyo Gamine is also responsible for dressing the SF Girls Chorus and the SF Symphony’s production of Candide and has produced two ready-to-wear lines.
Read “What will become of San Francisco’s high fashion?” in the San Francisco Examiner for an interview with Uehara about creating high fashion in the pandemic, including her line for Mode Brut.
To experience the Tokyo Gamine collection created with CE artists, visit Mode Brut at the Museum of Craft and Design, on view through January 22, 2022. All garments are available for sale, with a portion of proceeds benefiting the artists and CE – download the price list.