Friday, June 27, 2014

BEAUTY: Clothing--Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto at Paris Fashion Week. Spring Summer 2015.

What can I say? The art of Yamamoto is so thoroughly steeped in his own beautiful style, his own mythology, his own culture. Here again we see unconventional, roomy cuts; loose, flowing Japanese-style trousers; sashes and scarves; and a sense of the hobo from the Depression--the one from the 1920s, not the one from the 2000s (patched and cobbled together suits, grease-stained patterns), and a sense of Bohemia (fedoras on turbans, tight ethnic patterns)...perhaps even of the romanticized version of the Gypsy (scarf headbands). I have used a lot of adjectives in past posts to describe the work of Yamamoto but the one I missed was "romantic." And indeed, despite the presence of some dark themes now and then (his models tromped through yellow "bile" for this collection, see his FW '14 collection of skulls and nooses here, and see his cut and bruised models on the runway for his SS '13 collection here), there is definitely a kind of sweeping, poetical romanticism to his work.

New this collection is a kind of half-jacket held on with strapping, random words and phrases like "Los Angeles," "Made in Japan," "No Ghost But You," and "No. 1" scattered here and there, almost imperceptibly. But the reproduction of a flyer for a missing dog that found its way to the back of jackets and onto a tee turned humorous when it evolved into a flyer for a missing "Yohji."


http://www.yohjiyamamoto.co.jp/

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