Yamamoto clothing is often characterized by its use of washed, unironed fabrics, loose uncluttered forms, and dark colours. Its occasional combinations of Japanese and Western, traditional and contemporary references is characteristic of Postmodernist bricolage. After graduating in law from Keio University in Tokyo in 1966 Yamamoto studied for three years at the Fashion Culture Institute. In 1969 he won the Endo design prize, which took him to Paris where he worked for two years in the couture industry. Once back in Tokyo he established Y's ready-to-wear for women in 1972; Y's ready-to-wear for men was launched in 1977. He presented his first Yohji Yamamoto collection in Paris in 1981 and in 1984 his first Yohji Yamamoto pour Homme collection. Yohji Yamamoto+Noir was launched in 1995 and its clothing, as the name suggests, is largely black with splashes of bright colour.
Education: Graduated in Law, Keio University, 1966; studied at Bunka College of Fashion, Tokyo, 1966-68, won Soen and Endu prizes; earned scholarship to Paris, 1968, studied fashion, 1968-70.
Career: Designer, custom clothing, Tokyo, from 1970; formed ready-to-wear company, 1972; showed first collection, Tokyo, 1976; launched men's line, 1984; Yohji Yamamoto design studio, Tokyo, established, 1988; also opened Paris boutique; collaborated with Wim Wenders on film Notebook on Cities and Clothes, Berlin, 1989; signed licensing deal with Patou for fragrances, 1994; first fragrance, for women, Yohji, 1996; debuted womenswear collection in New York, 1996; opened new store in London, 1997; second women's scent, Yohji Essential, 1998; first men's fragrance, Yohji Homme, 1999; opened first freestanding boutique in SoHo, 1999; considered introducing cosmetics line, early 2000s.
Exhibitions:A New Wave in Fashion: 3 Japanese Designers, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, 1983.
Awards: Fashion Editors Club award, Tokyo, 1982; Mainichi grand prize, 1984, Fashion Group International, Master of Design, 1997.
Address: San Shin Building 1, 1-22-11 Higashi Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Part of a pioneering fashion sensibility that erupted onto the Parisian catwalks of the early 1980s, Yohji Yamamoto has a philosophical approach to fashion that makes him interested in more than just covering the body: there has to be some interaction between the body, the wearer, and the essential spirit of the designer. With Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, Yamamoto is exploring new ways of dressing by synthesizing Western clothing archetypes and indigenous Japanese clothing. Refusing to accept traditional ideas of female sexual display and reacting against the Western notion of female glamour as expressed in titillating figure-hugging garments, Yamamoto employs a method of layering, draping, and wrapping the body, disguising it with somber, unstructured, swathed garments based on the kimono that ignore the usual accentuation points.
Uncompromising to Western eyes, Yamamoto is in fact investigating the traditional Japanese conviction in beauty being not naturally given but expressed through the manipulation of the possibilities of the colours and materials of garments. Consequently, Yamamoto's clothing construction is viewed in the round rather than vertically, not from the neck down as in Western fashion, but a rectilinear, two dimensional approach that explores the visual appeal of asymmetry, the notion of the picturesque that plays an important part in Japanese design philosophy where irregular forms are appreciated for their lack of artifice and thus closeness to nature. Therefore, Yamamoto's garments have strange flaps, pockets, and layers, lopsided collars and hems, set off by the body in motion, and the labels inside are inscribed with the epithet, "There is nothing so boring as a neat and tidy look."
By not referring to Western fashion but to a fixed form of Japanese dress that has been developed and refined over the centuries, Yamamoto produces anti-fashion—non-directional garments that ignore contemporary Western developments of the silhouette but influence Western designers in turn. Beauty is more indefinable, to be found in the texture of materials rather than applied decoration, with the use of fabrics like linen and rayon that have been deliberately chosen and developed for their likelihood of wrinkling and heavy knitted surfaces. Like a number of Japanese designers, Yamamoto is interested in developing new materials.
Yamamoto's source material is idiosyncratic and derives from a vast library that he draws on for inspiration. One book to which he consistently refers is a collection of photographs by August Sander, a photographer based in Cologne in the early 20th century, who took photographs of representative types in the everyday clothes that sharply reflect their lives. Yamamoto is also inspired by utilitarian outfits such as the protective clothing worn by women munitions workers in the 1940s, and has been known to reproduce the coat lapel worn by Jean-Paul Sartre discovered in an old photograph.
Notable for his relentless use of black, a colour traditionally associated in Japanese culture with the farmer and the spirit of the samurai, Yamamoto's move into navy and purple in the 1980s was shortlived—he found it roused too many complicated emotions for him!
His company, launched in 1976, produces the experimental, idiosyncratic Yohji Yamamoto line, the Y & Y line for men that is moderately priced and extremely successful, made up of an easy to wear mixture of integrated separates and the Workshop line of casual leisurewear.
In 1989 Yamamoto, along with director Wim Wenders and producer Ulrich Felsberg, created a film based on his experiences of putting together one of his collections. The result, Notebook on Cities and Clothes, dealt with perceptions of dress, contained interviews with Yamamoto and his staff, and compared the film and fashion industries. The film was released on videocasette in 1993. The following year Yamamoto signed with Patou to produce several fragrances. The first, Yohji, was in development for two years and was released in France in 1996 (in the U.S. in 1997), and was followed by a second scent for women, Yohji Essential in 1998. Yamamoto's first fragrance for men, Yohji Homme, debuted in 1999, as his first freestanding U.S. boutique opened its door in New York's SoHo neighborhood. and the designer was considering a line of cosmetics in the near future.
Considered one of the brightest and most creative minds in the fashion industry, Yamamoto's showings consistently draw cheer from fellow designers and the press alike. In Paris in early 2000, Yamamoto "used his runway in an elaborate celebration of romance, from start to finish," said Women's Wear Daily, (29 February 2000) including coats, suede dresses, and "fabulous suits, inventively cut and draped." His spring showing in late 2000 was "infused with a quiet elegance," according to Women's Wear Daily (1 November 2000), which further commented, "Do designers have to shout to be heard? Not always. Yohji Yamamoto certainly doesn't."
Publications
By Yamamoto:
Books
Yohji Yamamoto, with François Baudot, Paris, 1997.
On Yamamoto:
Books
Phoenix Art Museum, A New Wave in Fashion: Three Japanese Designers [exhibition catalogue], Phoenix, Arizona 1983.
Koren, Leonard, New Fashion Japan, Tokyo, 1984.
Fraser, Kennedy, Scenes from the Fashionable World, New York, 1987.
Sparke, Penny, Japanese Design, London, 1987.
Coleridge, Nicholas, The Fashion Conspiracy, London, 1988.
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York, 1996.
Articles
"Big, Bold and Black: The Japanese Fashion Invasion," in Life, April 1983.
"Yohji Yamamoto: Fashion Designer," in Blueprint (London), February 1987.
"In Pursuit of Excellence," in i-D (London), May 1987.
"Mr. Yamamoto Comes Back to Town," in Blueprint (London), December 1987.
"Yohji Yamamoto: La vie d'artiste," in Elle (Paris), 19 September 1988.
Montagu, Georgina, "A Life in the Day of Yohji Yamamoto," in the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 26 February 1989.
Flett, Kathryn, "Yohji by Knight: Photography at Work," in The Face (London), April 1989.
Deslaudieres, Ainree, "Le long voyage á la recontre de Yohji Yamamoto," in L'Officiel (Paris), May 1989.
"Yohji Yamamoto: Les femmes et moi," in Vogue (Paris), November 1989.
Sudjic, Deyan, "Go Yohji, Go!," in the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 2 December 1990.
"Yohji Yamamoto in Deal to Develop Fragrance," in WWD, 5 July 1994.
Koshi, Lorna, "Yohji's New York Minute," in WWD, 12 December 1994.
"The Paris Collections—The Ideas of March: Yohji Yamamoto," in WWD, 17 March 1995.
Kerwin, Jessica, "Yamamoto Bites into the Big Apple," in WWD, 26 March 1996.
Aktar, Alev, "Yohji Readies Scent," in WWD, 12 July 1996.
Born, Peter, "Yohji Scent to Make U.S. Debut—Quietly," in WWD, 31 January 1997.
Foley, Bridget, "The Master Builders: Three Paris Titans Show How It's Done—Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, Yohji Yamamoto, and Jean-Paul Gaultier)," in WWD, 16 March 1998.
Ozzard, Janet, "May Debut for Yohji Homme, in WWD, 2 April 1999.
Chua, Lawrence, "Yohji Yamamoto—Exploring the Yamamoto Cult," in WWD, 13 September 1999.
"Punk Power or Rich Romantics," in WWD, 29 February 2000.
"A Languid Air—Designer Yohji Yamamoto's Spring Collection," in WWD, 1 November 2000.
Yamamoto became an influential fashion designer after making his Paris debut in 1981. His commercially successful main lines, Yohji Yamamoto (women/men) and Y's, are especially popular in Tokyo. These two lines are also available at his flagship stores in New York, Paris, and Antwerp, and at high-end department stores worldwide. Yohji Yamamoto Inc. reported in 2007 that the sales of Yamamoto's two main lines average above $100 million annually.
Yamamoto is known for an avant-garde spirit in his clothing, frequently creating designs far removed from current trends. His signature oversized silhouettes in black often feature drapery in varying textures.
Yamamoto's daughter Limi Feu has followed in his footsteps. She debuted as a fashion designer at the Tokyo Fashion Week in 2000, showed in Tokyo from 2000 to 2007, and debuted to critical acclaim in Paris in 2007.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yamamoto was involved in a relationship with fellow Japanese avant-garde fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Commes des Garcons fame.
Fashion fellowship
In 2008, the Yohji Yamamoto Fund for Peace (YYFP) was established in conjunction with the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development (CFFPD).[2] to foster development of China's fashion industry and to help heal the long-standing enmity between China and Japan. Each year, an emerging Chinese designer will be awarded with a two-year scholarship to a fashion college in Japan or Europe, and a male or female Chinese fashion model will be selected to make a runway debut during the Paris prêt-à-porter season[3].
Yamamoto has been quoted as saying: "In China, they must have so many angry young people. Being a fashion designer or an artist, you have to be angry."[4] Of the fashion show he staged in Beijing in spring 2008 to launch this initiative, Yamamoto said, "It's not political. I am going to open a store here, then Chinese people will come and shop there, and then they are happy. The real art is making people happy, but also asking questions about society."[5]
Career
1972 Y's joint stock corporation founded.
1977 Tokyo collection debut.
1981 Pret a porter collection debut in Paris. Yohji Yamamoto line started at the same time.
