YOHJI YAMAMOTO
Yohji Yamamoto was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1943. He did not always know he wanted to be a fashion designer: he attended Keio University and graduated with a law degree before going on to the Bunka College of Fashion and, later, to Paris, where he studied fashion and fashion design until 1970.
For two years, Yamamoto devoted himself to custom clothing. He is often described as an avant-garde designer: he ignores current trends in favour of creating styles that express his own desires and ideas for clothes instead of the fashion du jour.
CLOTHES BY YAMAMOTO ARE INTENTIONALLY OVER-SIZED, THEY ARE FLATTERING WITHOUT SHOWING THE FIGURE
In 1972, he started his first company, which featured ready-to-wear clothes that showed off his characteristic style of a slightly tousled look, with fabrics often appearing wrinkled, well-loved and worn. Clothes by Yamamoto are generally oversized but not baggy: they are carefully calculated to be flattering while not showing off too much of the figure. For Yamamoto, the focus of the model or woman wearing his clothes is most definitely the fashion item itself.
Yamamoto’s love for fashion moves past his occupation as a fashion designer and into the film world: he famously collaborated with Wim Wenders for the director’s 1989 film Notebook on Cities and Clothes. Through this film, it is obvious that for Yamamoto, fashion is not just a way of making a living but a way of life.
Yamamoto’s fall/winter 2008/2009 lines for women and for men continued in the vein of his previous work. For women’s fashion, flowing skirts and fitted tops in fabrics with contrasting textures were all over the runway. Most fashions were in simple black, drawing attention, as always, to the shape of the clothing rather than brightly popping patterns. In men’s fashion, Yamamoto took his inspiration from the military. In an interview, he mentioned that he thought that in past years, men’s fashion had been becoming too feminine. There is nothing feminine about this men’s line, and influences from this masculinity can even be seen in some of the pieces from his women’s collection for this season.
The new womens Spring/Summer collection for 2009 is dutifully coloured in the trademark black and white but has a lighter air than its winter counterpart, concentrating on suits with over-stitching and loose fitting dresses.
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by LeeLeeLu