A striped Ivy League blazer and a wide-rim fedora hat are among the garments hanging from the wall. Nearby, a poster of The Checkers is tacked above a television topped with a radio. Record decks and headphones sit on a metal shelf above rows of vinyl records that continue across the floor. Manga volumes line the bookcase, whilst figures and folded jeans fill its other compartments. Shopping bags from boutiques across Tokyo accumulate at the edges of the room. Surrounded by all of this, we're invited to imagine Tomoaki Nagao, better known as Nigo.

Entering the London Design Museum's current exhibition, Nigo: From Japan with Love, we encounter this reconstruction of the prolific fashion designer's teenage bedroom. What struck me was not only the contents of Nigo's collection, but the absence of any obvious attempt to compose it. Peering in, each object seemed settled in place through use and habit. Nothing appeared curated for display, nor arranged to convey a particular image or identity.

I thought about my own room, which I had seen as a fragmented space: a collection of curiosities and interests, gathered over time and placed where convenient. Compared with the more thoughtfully presented rooms I had encountered, mine always felt unfinished. I assumed a bedroom should offer a coherent representation of its occupant, and went through phases of trying to impose that coherence on my own. But the more I attempted to perfect the space, the less it reflected the way I actually lived and thought.