Paris-based Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada, the founder of the brand Kenzo, has died of coronavirus at the age of 81.
Takada passed away on Sunday 4 October in Paris, the city he called home since he moved to France in 1965 to start his fashion career.
Known for his use of bright colours and for bringing Japanese prints and textiles to Europe's catwalks, Takada was one of the defining fashion designers of the 70s and 80s.
Kenzo Takada founded the fashion house Kenzo. Photo by Michell Zappa
Born in 1939 in Himeji to hotelier parents, Takada struggled to realise his dreams of being a designer in his homeland.
"I was once told that it was impossible for a Japanese man to work in the fashion industry in Paris," Takada once told the Financial Times. "Men weren't allowed into design schools. Being creative was not accepted in Japanese society in the 1950s. And more than anything, my parents opposed the idea of me working in fashion."
Following the death of his father he left university and in 1958 was able to study at the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, which had just begun to accept male students.
When the Japanese government demolished his apartment to make way for the 1964 Olympics, Takada used the compensation money to buy a boat ticket to Paris.

 

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Arriving in the French capital in 1965, Takada survived by sellin...