Paris (AFP)

The fashion world lost on Sunday, in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, one of its legends: the Japanese Kenzo died at the age of 81 from the Covid, after a long career in France where he imposed his graphic and floral style.

Kenzo Takada was the first Japanese designer to make his mark in Paris, where he made his entire career and made his name famous.

He, who sold his clothing brand to the giant LVMH in 1993 and retired from fashion six years later, will remain known for his attachment to color and his infinite variation of miscegenation, not just Extreme. East and France, but also Africa.

Keeping his look of eternal teenager, the designer had come out of a twenty-year retirement at the start of the year to launch a design line.

He "died on Sunday October 4, 2020 at the American Hospital of Neuilly-sur-Seine as a result of the Covid-19", said a spokesperson, in a statement Sunday.

"Today, his optimism, his zest for life and his generosity remain the pillars of our house. He will be sadly missed and will leave lasting memories," Kenzo wrote on Twitter about its founder.

"With its inventive cuts, its multicultural inspirations and its prints tinged with exoticism, Kenzo has undeniably participated in the writing of a new page of fashion, at the confluence of East and West", underlined in a press release from the Federation of Haute Couture.

Born February 27, 1939 in Himeji near Osaka, Kenzo Takada was passionate about drawing and sewing, taught to his sisters, but forbidden to boys.

Driven from his apartment in Tokyo by the Olympic Games after his studies in fashion design, he embarked in Yokohama on a liner in November 1964. He arrived in France on January 1, 1965, in the port of Marseille, and went up to Paris, which fascinated him. .

Living very poorly, and having the worst difficulties in communicating, Kenzo Takada thinks he is only passing through.

"I found everything dark. Even Saint-Germain-des-Prés," he told the daily Liberation in 1999.

- "To enjoy life" -

He persists, submitting his designs to couturiers and ready-to-wear brands.

And he settled permanently in France.

"I now feel more Parisian than Japanese, but if I had to do it again today, I'm not sure that I would come and live in Paris again", he said to Paris Match in 1989.

His first collection dates from 1970, designed from a tiny boutique in the Galerie Vivienne which he calls Jungle Jap.

He moved in 1976 to a larger location, Place des Victoires, and founded his brand under his first name alone.

His first line for men dates from 1983, his first perfume (Kenzo Kenzo) from 1988. Five years later, the brand was bought by the luxury group LVMH, for less than half a billion francs (73 million euros). euros).

"Kenzo Takada knew, from 1970, to give to fashion a tone of light poetry and an allure of soft freedom which inspired many creators", greeted the CEO of this group, Bernard Arnault.

Kenzo Takada left fashion in 1999, to put an end to the infernal rhythm of the collections and devote himself to more occasional projects.

"I am 60 years old and have a 30-year career. For a long time I wanted to enjoy life, travel, see friends," he told AFP at the time.

The latest of those projects was called K-3, a design brand launched in January.

"With a stroke of a pencil, with a quick gesture, he invented a new artistic fable, a new colorful epic marrying East and West, his native Japan and his Parisian life," said the CEO of this company, Jonathan Bouchet. Manheim.

With his "nearly eight thousand designs", the Japanese designer "has never ceased to celebrate fashion and the art of living," said his spokesperson.

"Creator with immense talent, he had given color and light their place in fashion. Paris is now mourning one of its sons," the mayor of the French capital Anne Hidalgo reacted on Twitter.

"The Minister of Culture salutes the memory of an iconic and daring creator," Minister Roselyne Bachelot told AFP.

"I loved him and admired him," said his predecessor Jack Lang.

© 2020 AFP