FROTH ON THE DAYDREAM

Now that the fanfare over blue jeans has subsided, and the normcore wave has crashed on the shore into a smattering of other cores that we don’t care about at all, there’s little to no press about 45R to be found. Yet Yasumi Inoue has been doing the same thing this whole time (since she started in 1977): making fucking awesome clothing. 

Canberra, Australia’s capital city, is often touted as city living with country benefits. Perhaps that’s what draws me into 45R’s aesthetic so: there’s an undeniable metropolitan aspect matched to something you’d find beaten and battered on a fisherman hauling line in the contested waters of the South China Sea. This fit here has it all: the cozy fleece that would surely serve a practical purpose out in the bush; or in my case, the outback after the sun goes down-- perfectly colour matched all the way through with the subtle colour palette that you can find running through every single one of 45R’s collections. Their stores are like little temples or sanctuaries on busy shopping streets (the Marais store in Paris, especially so)-- where i’m served tea while ogling at speckled tweed.

Spent the whole winter wearing tweed, really-- and now, just as it’s coming to a close here, i’ve managed to pick up one of these jackets (albeit in the other colourway, so this image does nothing to showcase the parcel currently en route).

I can remember where my recent infatuation with the classic fabric started. I was in Scotland over the Christmas and New Year period in the winter of 2019/2020 and caught the train up from London to Edinburgh. Seated across from me sipping on a Starbucks latte and eating a Waitrose sandwich with a Cadbury chocolate bar was this strawberry-blonde haired man in a Harris Tweed coat. He’d layered his coat over a green v-neck sweater and a button down, a classic university look for those students in your philosophy tutorials that never, ever shut the fuck up.