BEAUTY: Clothing--Yohji Yamamoto

I always love seeing a Yohji Yamamoto collection...the highly regarded and highly decorated designer is one of those elevated, iconic artists who are singular. While I love when a designer takes inspiration, or inspirationS from some wild, fascinating, interesting source, Yamamoto exists in a realm of his own mythology, much like Rick Owens. Yamamoto has his own vernacular and his own internal logic. His creations--East and West elements combined into a future/retro (sometimes ecclesiastical) sensibility, layered and slouchy Bohemian chic garments, flowing asymmetrical cuts, all awash with an insouciant, rippling sense of Romanticism worthy of any French Symbolist poet--are timeless, since they are not necessarily tethered to anything outside of their orbit.

So for his Spring Summer '23 collection just shown at Paris Fashion Week, he concentrated on a classic silhouette: the suit...but the looks were Yamamoto-fied with touches like zig-zag plackets on jackets, loose flowing wide-legged trousers, skirts, and aprons. For the last many seasons, Yamamoto has been peppering his creations with little slogans that serve as cryptic shorthand to his ideas and mood for creating the collection, and this year we have quotes like "What are you made of?" "Sh***y life," and "I am so bored with rules."

Yamamoto's unofficial nickname is the King of Black so it was nice to see a burst of color late in the collection. Some of the suiting pieces featured designs and colors that were nearly psychedelic! But at the heart of the collection, we have tailoring. As fashion journalist Laird Borrelli-Persson noted in her Vogue review of the show, Yamamoto's clothes not only look different but they are constructed differently.

Also of note: some pretty cool work boots/brogues cut up to be sandals:

https://www.yohjiyamamoto.co.jp/en/