Yohji Yamamoto, Autumn/Winter 2001-2002 — My Clothing Archive (2024)

Yohji Yamamoto Fall 2001 Ready-to-Wear Collection

Vogue

Sporty Yohji? Jamais!

Think again—the Japanese master of fluid, dramatic silhouettes and couturelike craftsmanship proved that he can deliver plenty of surprises with a casual, athletic-inspired collection.

Naturally, this was no ordinary track-and-field uniform. Baseball-bomber blousons were designed to trap one of the arms of its wearer in its folds. Casual trousers came equipped with a short skirt overlay. A hooded baseball-inspired jacket was shown with a voluminous, ballooned floral-print skirt. And no Yamamoto show would be complete without artful draping: His long, amorphous coats revealed unexpected panels when least expected; asymmetric dresses exposed one arm and covered the other with a generous, flowing sleeve.

Yamamoto's accessories included visor sunglasses and velvety bags that doubled as scarves—but it's the colorful sneakers with red soles, silver racing stripes and floral designs that will have customers lining up next Fall.

PORTRAIT

Yohji Yamamoto: Finding the right moment

What was called "the Japanese Fashion", appeared in the 80's. It was the discovery of Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, with the Comme des Garçons stores and Issey Miyake. All three have become international icons and have had a dramatic influence on fashion in Europe, where trends have traditionally been initiated, challenging everything: codes, symbols, taboos, pitches, values and the meaning of fashion.

Yohji Yamamoto's collections were cut out of all sorts of fabrics, but they were almost invariably black or white. Sometimes in the summer, ivory or terracotta seemed like a bold venture into the world of colours.

The precise and sophisticated suit cuts contravened the established codes. His clothes were literally an expression of the times: a piece of fringed sleeve on a suit, a voluminous pocket, a missing part on a seemingly classic cut, mismatched front and back... each piece of clothing was a surprise, a shock: the transformation process operated in reference to an extremely subtle culture of Western codes (dilatation, contraction, shortening, lengthening, excessiveness, and even jokes that were sometimes very sombre when the outfit evoked the rags of a very poor country or the aftermath of an accident or bombings).

Yohji Yamamoto's clothes were a political statement, a criticism of society, and comments on the West, although they remained very expensive, like some subversive and inaccessible works of art.

The ideology has changed. The collections are less scornful. It is as if knowledge and a more relaxed rapport with the Orient have come softly with the Kimono collection. Out of radical black have emerged fragments of collections in colours and prints.

Like the greatest artists, Yohji Yamamoto is cautious with references, colours and symbols, because their meaning can be blown up out of all proportion. An austere black wool fabric is already too much, it is hard to cut, it provokes dizziness, and then, the expression of the shape and the alchemy of the volume propel the piece into a world of dreams, fairytales, terror and wonder. So, the pattern is the result of a great inner revolution, precisely like a painter's period. Besides, for Yamamoto, the word BLACK evokes "laziness", and COLOUR, means "effort".

Body

Yohji Yamamoto contends that there is absolutely no dichotomy between the body and the soul. For him, the soul and the body are exactly the same thing. On the other hand, "the body is about change and transformation. It is an expression, which never stops. An expression, which never lasts." Yohji Yamamoto seems to be painfully aware of the precariousness, fragility and uncertainty of the existence of the body (mortal, one must admit). So the job of protecting, covering or uncovering the body has to change. It is a process in perpetual transformation. Because the idea of giving a meaning to a presence, a movement, to the desire to show, hide, transform or reveal the body, embraces the soul that inhabits that body, a fickle soul that stores experiences, knowledge and doubts. Like a musician, Yohji listens to infinite or minute variations and transposes them into the fabric. For him, the fabric is the "skin". Volume is gravity: clothes find their centre of gravity beyond all statements, beyond perfect imperfections deliberately designed, such as flocked boiled cotton or unstitched pockets. Gravity in a completely “reorganised" instability in the image of an individual, tormented, joyful, thoughtful, full of hatred, sympathetic, tired, melancholic... Reconstruct the precariousness, create it and give it some gravity.

Fashion and sports

It seems that it was in a spirit of profound humanity and art that Yohji was asked to design a collection for the popular Adidas brand. All change for the disorganised aisles of sporting goods stores and supermarkets: green carpets with a finish line, an immediate reference to records, to workouts, excellence, a well-shaped body, idealised, almost naked. A contradiction.

"I think fashion helps us get rid our inferiority complex and sports allow us to do it in a practical manner. We try to find something purposeful in the body by stretching, jogging, and attending fitness clubs. But where are we headed with this tiny space called body?"

Fashion has its own codes. "I have been thinking about this contradiction, and this time, I wanted to see if 'sports could be elegant'." The word 'Elegant' here has the same nuance as the Japanese word 'Iki', which is a state of mind that hides resignation or a complex that hides behind common sense.

With this definition of "elegance", it is uneasy to solve the contradiction because sport is also about baring oneself. Fashion doesn't seem to exist at sporting events. There are nothing but stretched bodies, strained foreheads, protruding muscles, tense faces and jaws, enlarged eyes, sweat, nudity and exposure.

So Yohji Yamamoto's answer is not meant in a literal sense. His answer expresses criticism and offers an aesthetic solution. It is radical and uncompromising. Just like a game (which is a more sophisticated repeat of the barbaric rites of competition and victory, a sublimated war metaphor) this extraordinarily calm and tense, thoughtful and alert collection, truly translates what would be in sports as in the arts, viewed as "self-excellence". Again, the same contradiction. Asymmetry takes on its full significance in the physical and mental desire to push back the limits. Shackled arms, a bare leg, the other one covered, one visible calf, a red sole that flashes on a streamlined black shoe, the irony of a velvet scarf for carrying shoes (after the physical effort), boxing gloves in the hands of young girls and uniforms, always present: it is a vision of an era, of war, of aesthetic and its codes (quite essential in sports), on the possibility of pushing the contradiction to its limits in order to create a specific language. Solemn, ironic and funny, the collection was shown without music, "because I do not want the music to help the audience to "feel" in any way. The absence of music brings tension. My purpose was to give strength to the clothes so that the audience forgets the tension."

Image

Image is very important to the promotion of the brand as it resorts to advertising only for the "Y'S" line. Advertising is done in the form of catalogues, books and booklets that don't really feature the whole collection. Designed by Irène Silvagni, former Vogue fashion director and now the director of the Yohji Yamamoto brand for Europe, and Nathalie Ours, assisted by creative directors Mattias and Michael (M and M), the catalogues are an interpretation of a collection, true photographic and poetic variations. Just as the Japanese creator is capable of creating a whole collection out of a single fabric, one colour, and one theme, here the image can focus only on one detail, opening it up. The juxtaposition of the photos and the choice of models create a sort of opera out of the clothes and generate a sense of wonder at a single printed motif or the outline of a stitch. Sometimes, just taking many pictures of the same face without even showing the tip of a blouse, can give a meaning to a whole collection, the state of body and mind of one season, of one moment...

Lost In Space deconstructs Adidas

Design consultancy Blue Source, commissioned several leading artists and illustrators to work on the new Adidas Print Campaign. Lost In Space was among those chosen, because of its innovative approach to digital imagery, to work on two images for the campaign. The Campaign will run throughout 2001 and the first of the Lost in Space images can be seen in the march edition of Dazed and Confused,----

Lost in Space designer Leo Marcantonio worked closely with Blue Source creatives Leigh Marling and Mark Tappin to uniquely apply Lost In Space's 3d design aesthetic to Blue Source's initial concepts producing an innovative new look for digital illustration.

Building on its experiments with laser scanned wireframe imagery for the fashion industry showcased in BIG magazine and Dazed and Confused during 2000 Hybridizing 3d wireframe technology and a very graphic illustrative style Leo produced electric and dynamic next generation wireframe images of the new Adidas Tenet II.

Lost in space applied Lightwave 3d v 6.0 to the problem using its advanced clip mapping and wireframe rendering capabilities. High-resolution images where generated on Max Black NT work stations and manipulated in Adobe Photoshop 6 on an Apple Powermac G4.

Lost In Space designer: Leo Marcantonio
Lost In Space producer: Sallie-Jane Hudson

client: Adidas
design company: Blue Source