The future of fashion is here and it’s being ushered in by Yuima Nakazato, currently the only active haute couture designer in Japan. Embracing innovative scientific technologies and meshing them with older material techniques, Yuima is determined to move clothing away from mass production and toward respect for the individual and our environment. While designing sculptural haute couture for the runway, Yuima dreams up his visionary and socially-aware practice through research and experience of environmental and production issues happening all across the world — this time in Kenya, where the scale of textile waste is a harbinger of the urgent need for conservation and social change. 

Offering a humbling perspective within an industry plagued with issues of waste, excess and terrible environmental and social practices, Dust to Dust puts in the spotlight one brilliant mind whose care for the world around him is just as massive as the scale of his creative vision. This is a reimagining of the fashion world at its best and a radical envisioning of a better future conveyed through Yuima’s striking and ethereal designs.––Jose Rodriguez

Dust to Dust is the recipient of the 2024 Human/Nature Award, a prize established to amplify a film that best exemplifies solution-oriented environmental storytelling.

Kosai Sekine