Kikagaku Moyo Might Be the Best-Dressed Band of the Decade
Over the weekend, the music mega-festival known as Outside Lands descended upon the city of San Francisco. The three-day fest boasted such headliners as The Weeknd, Florence + the Machine, Janet Jackson, and Future. In addition to those huge names, there were also a number of up-and-coming bands and musicians from across the globe to round out the bill. One of those bands? Kikagaku Moyo, a Japanese psychedelic-rock band from Tokyo. Which is all well and good—festivals like Outside Lands are a fun way to find new acts to dig. But these dudes brought the ruckus, fashion-wise: the five-piece group was easily the best dressed of the weekend. We’re talking outfits that feel groovy and wild in ways that we’ve come to expect from menswear’s most expert-level dressers, filtered through a delightfully wacky Tokyo-funk lens.
The guys in Kikagaku Moyo know how to wear an explosion of color and print like nobody's business. (Seriously, Alessandro Michele needs to hit these guys up.) From sitar player Syu Kurosawa’s off-kilter neon-orange top to guitarist Tomo Katsurada’s striped extra-wide pants to the multicolored and multi-patterned button-up that (other guitarist) Daoud Popal wears, the band’s outfits are off the wall in the best way possible, and chock full of personality. Which is to say the band’s style is right on course for our current no-rules era of men’s fashion. No-rules style means a lot of things: wildly patterned shirts, roomy retro-cut pants, extremely crazy loafers, extravagant sneakers, and hard-charging suits you can party in. Kikagaku Moyo taps into this wave, and does so in a way that makes their own retro-inspired style feel uniquely fresh. Looking at photos from their set and it’s hard to tell if it’s 2018, or if you’re looking at an old snapshot from the ‘70s or ‘80s—and that is pretty wonderful.
It’s safe to assume that Kikagaku Moyo guys have an eye for design and fashion. The band's name translates to "geometric patterns," and the poster artwork for their upcoming European tour looks like something you might see on an Online Ceramics tee. Kikagaku Moyo might not be a big name in the states just yet, but if they keep releasing sweet fuzzy tunes (like their latest single “Gatherings”) and dressing with this level of bravado, expect to see a lot more of these guys in the future. And a small plea to our new menswear heroes: please put out some merch.
