Having kicked off this weekend, a major retrospective of the Japanese avant-garde designer Yohji Yamamoto will run until July. There are few fashion designers who could carry off a large scale exhibition of their designs – however beautiful – without viewers loosing interest. Yamamoto, however, is one of them. Subversive, humourous, and always pushing the boundaries, I imagine his garments would feel quite at home in a gallery setting.
There are many things which set Yamamoto apart from the rest of the fash-pack. He tends to stick to a very restrained palette of, well, black, black and more black. In womenswear, he often makes loose shapes which distract from the female body which lies underneath his garment – protecting them “from men’s eyes or a cold wind” – a far cry from the ethos of Western designers like Tom Ford. He works with local artisans, eschewing the temptation to outsource his production to cheaper neighboring countries (Japanese wages are amongst the highest in the world). Finally, he prefers imperfection and unfinished states over highly polished designs, in line with the traditional Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, an aesthetic in which objects of beauty are “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. Delight is found in subtle variations and unexpected ‘flaws’ – a rough edge, an asymmetric shape – and the intrigue they add to an object.
After his latest show in Paris, Yamamoto called upon the world to voice their discontent: “In this moment, we need flower power… but we also need young people’s anger.”His characteristically punkish collection (above) supported his plea. However these words were spoken a matter of days before the earthquake would hit Japan; now it seems the urgency for people to act is far stronger, albeit not in the way Yamamoto anticipated.
Rosa Abbott is an arts, fashion and culture obsessive originating from Yorkshire, England, and currently living in Dublin, Ireland. On top of being a student at the illustrious Trinity College, she is a freelance journalist, writing for a number of Irish publications, and also edits the visual arts section of entertainment magazine Totally Dublin.
When she’s not up to her eyeballs in writing, Rosa works as an assistant to stylist Aisling Farinella and volunteers at various art galleries. Her musings on life, style and art can also be found over at her blog, Too Gallant.
