–Katya Moorman
A hood cinched so tightly it nearly erases the face. A tailored vest left raw at the shoulders, its cream panels stained and fraying. Beneath it, lustrous brown fabric gathers like a protective membrane. This is Hikari no Yami’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, “Chapter 11: Parasite,” and its central proposition is less sinister than its title suggests. Here, the parasite is not simply an invader. It is a survival strategy: attaching, absorbing, adapting and becoming something else.
The collection notes begin with a line from Wayne Dyer: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” It is an apt invitation to reconsider the supposed defects on display. A stain becomes an archive; an exposed seam becomes ornament; dependency becomes a form of resilience. Whitaker is not only altering garments, but attempting to alter the terms through which we decide what is damaged, finished or worthy of preservation.
Designer Jakarie Whitaker has long used deconstruction as both method and metaphor. In last year’s No Kill Mag interview, he described Hikari no Yami as his “philosophy book” and his practice as “reverse tailoring”—taking apart clothing’s most codified form in order to question the systems around it. “Parasite” pushes that inquiry toward the unstable boundary between dependence and autonomy. If identity is built through what we inherit, consume and discard, where does the self end and everything else begin?
Fabrics from past seasons are combined with upcycled garments and deadstock cotton, wool and Japanese nylon mesh, then hand-stitched, painted, dyed, sprayed or sealed in resin. These processes bring the construction of each piece to the surface, turning exposed seams, interfacing and loose threads into deliberate details. A black hooded jacket covered in pale, tattered fragments resembles an organism carrying the remains of earlier forms; worn with voluminous cargo trousers and a sheer top, it moves between armor and exposure.
The collection is strongest when its raw surfaces are balanced by restraint. A lean black jacket marked by precise white slashes appears almost austere over a stained white shirt and wide, cropped trousers, while the concentrated palette of black, bone, smoke and rusted brown gives the varied treatments a sense of cohesion.
photos ©Roman Pushkarskii
Alpha Industries contributes military silhouettes shaped by utility and uniformity, which Whitaker adapts into more individual forms. Molded spines and resin-encapsulated tops by Cierra Calmeise introduce a bodily, almost fossilized quality; Vanessa Vun’s ink-dyed shirts add gesture and irregularity; and ALTER LAB’s sculpted footwear gives the silhouettes a grounded, anatomical weight.
Sustainability is embedded in the collection’s construction, with reused materials retaining their wear and earlier seasons remaining physically present within new garments. The Ship of Theseus motif gives this practice a philosophical frame, connecting the changing identity of an object to an industry sustained by continual replacement and the endless production of “newness.”
“Parasite” is not about purity. Its best looks are compelling precisely because they admit contamination: art and utility, tailoring and collapse, protection and vulnerability. Hikari no Yami proposes that clothes, like people, are never finished objects. They carry contact, damage and repair forward. In Whitaker’s hands, survival is not a return to wholeness. It is the decision to keep transforming—and to look again.
photos ©Roman Pushkarskii
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