DNA of a Designer

 

The way how Yohji Yamamoto clothing silhouettes are telling stories about our culture, identity, and political movements, that’s the way how his clothes are represented on the runway (by models and location).

 

“For my total life, I have been in black.” “Always in the dark not in the light.” “Somehow it attracts me and helps me with my rhythm” (Yohji Yamamoto, Interview “This is my dream”).

I call him the master of shadows; a designer who was born during World War II, on June 3rd, 1943 in Tokyo. He was the son of a “dress-maker” mom, who studied law first until he realized that his mother needed help with her dressmaking business, which let him experience the hard work, eagerness and well-tailored garments needed to convince and communicate a message to its observer (audience) that reflects upon the culture and the political movements of our time (English Vogue, Yamamoto, 2012). In the following essay, I am going to discuss what stories (culture) Yohji Yamamoto’s clothing silhouettes show and tell about the past, the present and the future?

 

After he received a degree at Bunka Fashion College, he started to work for his own label Y’s, where he launched his first line 1972 at the Paris Fashion Week. Together with Rei Kawakubo, Yohji and her gave birth to anti-fashion, a style which was completely the opposite Haute couture people have seen and glamorized until the 70s and 80s.  Together they revolutionized the Fashion scene in Paris and all-around Europe, which was for me a conscious and clever movement, to change and question the Fashion scene in a new and unfamiliar way. Yohji and Rei style was Avant-grad, meaning that their garments were mind puzzling, dark and conceptual. Both played with ideas of oversized and unisex clothing, performance instead of glamorous fashion shows and clothes that looked like “rag bags” (Bonnie, Japanese Fashion Designers, chapter Yohji Yamamoto) (which was well tailored and excluded high heels). Rei and Yohji were one of the first who introduced poetry to the runway in order to mirror the truth human identity and its culture. The “no-go” rules in fashion were broken. Models, who were representing Yohji’s clothing silhouettes on the runway, were walking like robots with no make-up and a fuzzy hair style, which “symbolized neediness, destitution and hardship” (Bonnie, Japanese Fashion Designers, chapter Yohji Yamamoto). Yamamoto and Kawakubo, (which once were a couple that hided their collections from one and another) presented a Fashion culture that was free and very simple in cuts and forms that expressed the political and cultural changes influenced by the techno music, the Chernobyl disaster, the crunch and the world economic crisis in the 1920s and 30s. They were leading faces, who changed and polarized the style of Haute couture in order to show and prove to the fashion world, that fashion can be free as air, poisonous and dirty as air. Yohji describes Fashion as the abstract tool that is free and in constant movement. Fashion has its ups and downs, its dark and light moments in time which depends upon our culture and “what air we breathe, which can be good or bad” (Anti-Fashion documentary, Arte, 2015). Rei and Yohji’s silhouettes empowered both female and men equally, which rooted at heart in their revolutionary movement. Likewise, his clothes should be practical, hiding privacy and be free for motion. Yohji always has been true to his style, critiques in Paris at that time hated his clothes, but he loved it. He doesn’t call himself a fashion Designer because he doesn’t follow trends. He sees himself more like a dress-maker, just like his mom, which he always refuses back to it as hard work and that he had become a “clothing machine” since he entered this world of light and shadow (Anti-Fashion documentary, Arte, 2015).

 

Today, Yamamoto collaborates with Adidas on his brand Y-3, which was launched 2003, after he called Adidas (one of his greatest inspirations and influencers in his clothing and shoe style) to ask them whether it be possible, to borrow their stripes, and that’s how the collaboration started. In the meantime, he still continues to run and present his voice through his personal Y’s line, which he either performs in Tokyo or Paris Runway shows. His vision today the way how I see it is still the same. He continues not to follow a trend, but his vision is now more futuristic, especially through the collaboration with Y-3 which plays again with the idea of a dystopian world, in which the future culture and fashion world will be highly technologized. In other words, Yohji’s voice and his Y-3 or Y’s silhouettes (which has become even more radical and playful in cut and trapping) remind me of the film “Big Brother watching you” from George Orwell, in which characters and settings are very effective by telling the story of a dystopian lifestyle and its culture (which radically wipes it all out). Maybe he wants us to realize something there, maybe he sees this to be the worst-case scenario and maybe fashion and our society can change/ reimagine the consumerist behavior in a new way. I think that we all should seek for the optimum, find our own voice, our own identity and change something that helps sustain life, culture, traditions, communications, partnerships, and love on earth.  Together for the new tomorrow, where fashion is not price tagged, simplicity is beauty and sustainable.

 

In conclusion, I strongly agree that Yohji Yamamoto silhouettes have always either reflected or glimpsed into the future of humanities cultural movements and their dreams. On these grounds, one can claim that Yohji’s clothing silhouettes most likely tell and record the memories and experiences of the social, cultural and political movements of our time to either critique, reflect or raise awareness on society or for society (depending how dirty the air is). Yohji is a designer who “personifies fashion that is timely” and always through his voice and nobody else’s (Kawamura, 2004, chapter 4, pp 57). I believe that Yohji is a designer who can see and make reality more playful, colorful, mysterious and hilarious. He is a constant observer of the present, which stimulates and inspires him to reflect and create on societies mood, its needs, and its wishes.  Furthermore, I strongly believe that his voice as a “fashion” designer and as a human was shaped by the experiences with World War II and the death of his father, which maybe explains why his silhouettes are so dark, mysterious and have the practicality to help us survive and hide from the unknown future. A future that may always seem mysterious and dark for the human eye.

 

 

Reflection

 

Researching and writing about Yohji’s life and his vision as a designer was very mind-blowing and at the same time I felt very connected/attracted to his style of making. I think Yohji is not comparable to any other Fashion designer except Rei Kawakubo because he continues to change and twist his styles in an unfamiliar way. Each season there is something completely new and questionable for me, which explains why my interest in him keeps growing. Each time I observe his clothing silhouettes closer, the more I fall in love with it and make me question it over and over again. Now, I know much more about his history and the culture that Yohji represents in his creations, which makes me value the clothing even more than before. I also started to tailor my own pants which have been inspired by him to further improve and find my voice I want to express in my creation of clothes.  All in all, it was a pleasure digging deep and finding new inspiration because of him, which will help me to improve and further shape my voice as artist & designer (not fashion designer because we both do not follow trends).

 

His Work:

 

My inspiration and style

 

Work cited:

 

English, Bonnie. “Yohji Yamamoto.” In Japanese Fashion Designers: The Work and Influence of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, 37–66. London: Berg, 2011. Accessed March 03, 2018. http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.newschool.edu/10.2752/9781472572417/English0004.

 

English, Vogue. “Yohji Yamamoto.” Vogue English. June 11, 2012. Accessed February 21, 2018. https://en.vogue.fr/vogue-list/thevoguelist/yohji-yamamoto/1052.

 

Documentary. Germany: Arte, 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkhnY2mzY_0

 

Y-3, Adidas. “ADIDAS Y-3, This is my dream.” Adidas Y-3. Accessed February 17, 2018. http://www.y-3.com/US/#/yohji-yamamoto/dream/.

 

Citation: Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004. Accessed February 9, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central.