Japanese fashion designer, Kenzo Takada dies of coronavirus

Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada, popularly known as Kenzo, is dead.

Kenzo, 81, died of complications linked to COVID-19 on Sunday.

He passed away in France at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

The designer retired after selling his brand to LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury group.

He reigned alongside contemporaries like Jean Paul Gaultier and Yves Saint Laurent.

“Paris is mourning one of its sons today,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Twitter.

LVMH’s Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault said Kenzo “infused into fashion a tone of poetic lightness and sweet freedom which inspired many designers after him”.