Le-Fool.com | AW25

The Duality of Tamme

The division of a classic beige workhorse of a trench coat into a popped-collared cropped jacket and an unbuttoned skirt set the tone at Tamme. At first glance, Tatsuya Tamada’s predominantly neutral fall/winter 2025 collection “Nocturnal Forward” is corporate-core salary-chic, until it’s not. Somewhere in the mismatched details of Tamada’s elegant tailoring and easy snap-fastener neckties are stitches of the truth, if it exists.

The show started austere and traditional: crisp, bleached white shirt cuffs peeking out from under a navy-blue blazer with peaked lapels. By the third look, however, the same blazer is taken off and crumpled, wedged casually under the arm. The collection completes a full 180° with comfy grey sweatpants in a refined bootcut, where unique lines contrast with the simplicity of modern comforts.

“Nocturnal Forward” is weightless, without the presence of bags, briefcases, and backpacks. One model hand carries a few crumpled dollar bills on top of a copy of Albert Camus’s A Happy Death. His sweater is unzipped to reveal his bare chest under a muted charcoal office blazer, and his collar-straightening tie is loose and slanted, but he can’t be bothered to fix it; he’s in a rush to catch the train to another life.

A Happy Death is a two-part absurdist novel about two lives: one of a boring office job, and the other after the main character is radicalized (for better or worse) following the contentious words of a rich old man: “Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time.” After killing the old man, he spends the rest of his life hopping trains from one city to the next, before abandoning the world in the solitude of a remote village by the sea.

Images courtesy of Tamme

The knee-high fishmonger like boots under the fat-pocketed cargo pants and the untucked button-ups of “Nocturnal Forward” say it all: this is a collection for people with layers, who move through their secret midnight identities with unlimited aspirations. It’s a nod to those who have one career that pays the rent and another that pays dues to their dreams, like the barista who chooses the 4 a.m. shift because band practice is in the afternoon, or the accountant who works nights so at dawn she can photograph the sunrise before teaching spin class.

To the end Tamme keeps pushing on, staying curious in spite of uncertainty. The frayed hems of a starched morning coat resemble the cracks of a promised dream that doesn’t quite look like what it used to. A modern pursuit of happiness may or may not set new iterations of old codes but certainly requires a third place for us all just to breathe.