Why lain?

When I began thinking about this collection through the word “halation,” the anime that came to mind was serial experiments lain.

Whenever I collaborate with an anime, what matters to me is trying to understand, as fully as I can, what its creator wanted to communicate, and translating that into design.

I don’t want to stop at simply printing the illustrations or original artwork supplied by the rights holder.

Of course, I also make T-shirts and hoodies. They have a role as an accessible introduction, making the collaboration easy to recognize.
But I don’t want it to end there. I also want to express what I take from the work through the materials and the construction of the clothes.

In the previous article, I talked about seeing familiar clothing shapes as conservative. Perhaps everyday life is also a kind of conservatism that each of us has.
The connections within that everyday life, and the halation that happens there: I wondered whether I could express those things through lain.

Watching it again, I felt the fear of becoming dependent on connections, something that also resonates with social media today.
Another thing that stayed with me was how the same person can appear completely different depending on whose eyes we see them through.

How could I bring that feeling into clothing?
That was when I thought of joining separate pieces together.

I wanted to bring the power lines that appear throughout the work into the design. Those scenes where lines run through empty space. To me, they seemed to express “connection,” too.

Lines = cords.

Joining pieces with cord embroidery could be visually interesting, while also bringing what I felt from the work into the structure of a garment. With that in mind, I began combining prints and embroidery.

The prints show Lain as she appears to the different people involved with her in the story. I joined those pieces, each depicting a different view of Lain, with cord embroidery.

I also made the bear pajamas Lain wore, using wool boa.
For these, I imagined Lain wrapped in cables, and wound plenty of knitted cord, known as Liliyan, around the garment. It is still “cord,” but used differently from the cord that joins the pieces together.

I also put a lot of thought into the bear’s face. I wanted to avoid making it look too much like a toy.
What I was after was the three-dimensional form of a stuffed animal.
So it wasn’t just about the material; carefully shaping the face mattered, too.

I didn’t want to make clothes that simply celebrate connection as something positive.
The fear of depending on connections, and how a person is seen differently by different people: those were the two things I felt when I revisited lain.
I brought them not only into the graphics, but into the way the clothes are made.

Both joining with cords and wrapping with them were ways of expressing that.