There was no music to accompany the fashions because the Yohji Yamamoto present started. With solely the sound of their ft gliding down the raised picket runway and the digicam shutters clicking, the dim hush allowed for reflection on how completely different the Yohji expertise is from the remainder of trend—with no paid-to-be-there celebrities and no paparazzi throngs. Not that Yamamoto, who’s now 80 and who has been placing on runway reveals for over 40 years, was missing for notable attendees. Diana Widmaier Picasso and Klaus Biesenbach sat within the entrance row, close to the French artist Orlan, the musician Warren Ellis (who walked the designer’s males’s runway a month in the past), and the milliner Stephen Jones.
To begin, the gathering was all black. The small print disappear towards the background in these photographs, however there was nothing flat about Yamamoto’s designs. The coats, attire, and fits have been all embellished with collapsing squares of assorted sorts, like strolling cubist sculptures. Widmaer Picasso’s grandfather, in his cubist interval, depicted his topics from many alternative views, placing them in deeper, richer, and extra difficult context. Yamamoto was as much as one thing associated right here. Actually, the lady who wears one among these items on the road will get a double-take.
Shifting alongside, he performed with the same geometric shapes and volumes in mismatched purple and black plaids, or with pinstripes, checks, and tweeds that had a considerable hand-hewn look. In not less than one case, one of many bigger squares got here with a zipper for stowing potential requirements, however perform appeared not the purpose of those experiments. Utility isn’t what drives Yamamoto as a designer; if his items weave themselves into their wearer’s lives it’s for different extra esoteric and emotional causes.
Backstage Yamamoto was his typical mix of attentiveness and elusiveness, nodding his head at questions, however offering solely brief solutions. Was he referencing cubism? “Sure.” Picasso? Truly, “Braque.”
To conclude, he despatched out a gaggle of 5 muted grey fits and coats. From the entrance, these appeared like a rejection of the imaginative, experimental constructions that got here earlier than, with solely pyramidal shoulders including visible curiosity. Au contraire. Sadly for these witnessing the present solely on display screen, the entrance of these appears to be like tells simply half of the story. Because the fashions made their method again down the runway, they paused to pose and showcase the lavish bustles—extra natural than Braque’s cubist geometries—that embellished their backsides.
Because it occurs, on the Pompidou, there’s a black coat gown with a purple bustle from a 1989 Yamamoto assortment on show in Laurence Benaim’s affecting “La traverse des apparences” exhibition on the Centre Pompidou. Which brings it again to Stephen Jones. As he waited to say his hiya to Yamamoto, the well-known hatmaker remarked: “It’s so attention-grabbing to see all these issues different individuals have taken through the years from him, however really see him doing them.” Together with many modern designers as we speak. “It simply appears to be like so contemporary.”
