PARCO Collexion

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An exclusive and aggressively modern line of Japanese streetwear launched in 1988 by the PARCO department store and released in four segments. PARCO Collexion was the brainchild of commercial photographer Kazumi Kurigami and was reportedly influenced by the success of Commes des Garçons' punk-inspired "Destroy" line. Kurigami reportedly wanted the customers' first encounter with the PARCO Collexion to constitute a spiritual experience. To that end, he insisted on having the unknown German/Japanese synthesizer and saxophone duo ßynthündßäx commissioned to provide an in-store soundtrack. The group reportedly free-improvised the music in one day, yielding four tracks entitled I, II, III, and IV, thus mirroring the Collexion's four sub-lines. Despite the preceding success of Karigami's deeply strange mid-1980's advertisements, PARCO Collexion was a staggering commercial failure that, in the end, threatened the company with bankruptcy. The clothes were bizarre by any metric and poorly designed, often including borderline unwearable elements like heavy helmets, metallic meshes, and rigid ribbing. Karigami, ever the purest, insisted that only items from the Collexion be displayed in the PARCO showrooms, decimating the store's bread-and-butter seasonal income. Additionally, the sorrowful and introspective ßynthündßäx soundtrack caused many a potential patron to experience heavy existential emotions, with some crying or breaking down into hysterics. In misguided anticipation of the series' success, a limited series of PARCO Collexion vinyl recordings were printed, but never commercially released - four in total, each with a cover depicting a particularly notable item from the line.