grounds | Paris Women’s Fashion Week AW25
Words by Jude Jones, Photos by Lauren Cremer
Visionary Mikio Sakabe Announces a New Brand Direction
In the medieval mind the feet were the lowliest part of the body, their anatomical posture correlating to their perceived moral degradation, their cosmological Fall. For grounds creative director Mikio Sakabe, however, the feet are more than just sunken extremities – they are the keys to a holistic new phase for all humankind.
Founded as Giddy Up in 2018 before being rebranded as grounds in 2019, grounds is a Tokyo-based footwear brand known for its avant-garde, architectural play of forms. Boots that billow and ripple upwards in alien, blobular shapes; soles so swollen they look a little like Elizabeth Sparkle toward the latter end of The Substance - all is completely fair game as part of Sakabe’s slightly mad-scientist mission: “[to] propose a new image of human being by thinking from the feet.”
Advancing this rite to new frontiers, grounds presented its first foray into clothing as part of its FW25 collection “uncanny valley”. These new encroachments were perhaps a little less revolutionary and more referential than the footwear (a little Balenciaga FW22 here, a little Margiela FW16 there) however stylist Betsy Johnson succeeded in elevating the collection – belts-become-bondage-gear, oversized blazers emulative of Kanye West’s “I Love It”, sleek skin-fit sweaters and indie-sleaze short skirts – into a stylishly punkish and plane.
However, this lean into a grungier aesthetic for the footwear brand, whose environment was rounded off by the show’s hosting in an abandoned underground carpark, gestures toward a new direction for a grounds hitherto defined by the bright colours and kawaii tones that have made its indigenous Tokyo’s fashion scene famous. Mind, this isn’t fully stripped from the footwear collection, where cutesy lilacs, bold purples, and highlighter-bright tones still recur.
However, the muted palette of Johnson in collaboration with Sakabe fused his fashion world with one likely more reflective of hers – that of basement clubs, sordid free parties, and ketamine chic, something much more at home at the White Hotel of her semi-native Manchester. Rather than a whiplash diversion from what has so far made grounds successful though, this seems to be intentional manoeuvring from an always-prescient Sakabe as he attempts to establish his brand beyond Asia. “I recently went to the US for a look shoot,” Sakabe said in a 2023 interview with Niew Media, “and I found the way some people wear [grounds shoes] to be very attractive. It was interesting to see the difference in interpretation of street culture between Japan and America.” Evidently, “uncanny valley” was Sakabe’s attempt to bridge that gap, fusing the innate fun of his shoes with the cool cold of the Western fashion world, where his silhouettes are much more likely to be received by those who tip New Rocks, Ricks or Margiela as their footwear options of choice. AW25 was an ambitious and strategic move from grounds, and it will be interesting to watch this new direction, this brand reinvention, progress.
