Yohji
Yohji Yamamoto was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1943. He studied Law first (Keio University, 1966) and then studied fashion in Tokyo (Bunka College, 1968). During that time, he also started making clothes for his mother and her friends.
In 1968, he earned a scholarship to study in Paris and started designing clothing in 1970. He launched his company 1974, showed his first collection in Tokyo.
He debuted in Paris in 1981 and in New York in 1982.
Yamamoto’s use of black fabrics and flat shoes, with garments which are layered, loose and flowing garments seemed anti-aesthetic to the Parisian looks of pinched sillhouettes.
Yamamoto was designing for Japanese women, and thought of their comfort. What he did not realize was that his style provided a new approach to the body.
His Parisian review got mixed reviews and they are both extremes. Half the fashion critics called his designs, an “atomic explosion” while the other half hailed Yamamoto as the harbinger of a new look.
In the end, the critics words fell on deaf ear, and Yohji Yamamoto designed clothes the way he saw it. Rooted in Japanese culture, Yamamoto’s designs are not directional, but two-dimensional, a manipulation of movement and infinite combinations of shapes.
It is both symetrical and assymetrical, depending on the “total picture.”
In short, the clothes are more than the sum of its parts.
Yamamoto is the only Japanese fashion designer to have been awarded the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. He won the Mainichi Fashion Grand Prize in 1986.
Pronounced Nef Louise M 