“There were always two of us - my mother and me. She always wore black ": How Yohji Yamamoto conquered European fashion for his mother

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The life of the widow Fumi Yamamoto was filled with hard work. In post-war Japan, the owner of a sewing workshop found it difficult to stay afloat. Her husband died in 1945, and since then she preferred one color to all clothes - black. Her son Yohji, whose childhood was darkened by memories of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, began to help her unusually early. Many years later, he became famous as a designer who abandoned the bright palette in favor of the color of his mother's dresses.

He, of course, was not a prisoner of a sewing workshop. He loved to draw, rode a bicycle, never parted with a guitar. Several guitars are still kept in his workshop - the maestro does not deny himself the pleasure of playing a couple of ballads.

Fumi Yamamoto's workshop was located in the Kabuki-cho district of Tokyo's Shinjuku district. Her clients were housewives who dreamed of dressing in fashionable European and American dresses. Yohji hated this fashion - alien, impractical, uncomfortable, representing a woman as an object of consumption, fettering her.

Early becoming for his mother the only friend, helper, protector, he dreamed of freedom and comfort for all women in the world - but thought that these were just strange thoughts generated by anxiety for his mother.

He did not even aspire to become a designer - he did not even know that such a profession existed. He received a good legal education and was preparing to live life like most of the Japanese of his generation - boring work, boring rest … But it was the mother who realized that her son was not made for this, and convinced Yohji to try himself in the creative field. Yohji Yamamoto graduated from the Faculty of Fashion Design at Bunka College and set off to conquer Paris - he was only twenty-six.

Yohji was terribly disappointed with Paris. In European fashion, almost nothing has changed over the years - all the same "flower woman", narrow bodices, fetters, unsuitable for active life clothes. Yohji Yamamoto's ideas did not resonate with fashion directors. Rejected by them, completely crushed, he returned home.

But Fumi decided that they would not give up so easily. She sold her business so that her son could open a production in Japan, and brought her best dressmakers to him. Yohji Yamamoto began the production of men's clothing, which was close to the mentality of the Japanese - straight cut, simple, laconic things.

The first Japanese collections of Yohji Yamamoto had some success, and after a few years he decided to take revenge.

“Filthy rags! Hiroshima-chic! As from the Holocaust! " - critics spat poisonous. But now Yohji was unstoppable. Representatives of the creative intelligentsia, artists and musicians were suddenly not averse to shelling out round sums for the black baggy "rags" offered by Yamamoto.

Grunge triumphed in the counterculture - and Yamamoto accidentally found himself among the "fashion rebels". The raw edge and asymmetrical shapes attracted the attention of those Europeans and Americans who, like Yohji, were in constant creative search, in thinking about their path, their individuality. In the 80s, Yohji's biggest fan was famed actor Jack Nicholson.

Fumi has consistently accompanied her son on trips twice a year, helping him in the shows - she last visited Paris at the age of ninety-four. Yohji Yamamoto was one of the first feminists in the fashion world. "Stop confusing beauty with beauty!" - he declared.

Together with other Japanese designers, he proposed a new feminine image that rejects aggressive sexuality, clothes that hide the body and reveal the personality. He says that the key image of his collections is a woman of forty who smokes while looking at the falling leaves.

Clothes from Yamamoto deny cultural affiliation, gender, race and body parameters - after all, in the modern world, individuality is more important than identity. Seasonality and trends are also not for things from Yamamoto.

He himself calls his models, as if artificially aged and overlapping with historical styles, "eternal" - and, of course, he is right.

He built a bridge between West and East - he altered traditional Japanese clothing in a European way, following the ancient cultural principle of "wabi-sabi" - the beauty of imperfection.

He sings an ode to black, but sometimes includes bright colors in his collections - scarlet, yellow, does not avoid white.

The images in his collections are inspired by war, destruction, wandering and loneliness - and are closely related to his childhood. The fear of losing his most beloved woman does not leave him: “In every fashion model's departure, I mentally replay my parting with my mother. I cry, shout something after her, beg her to return. But she still leaves …”.

“I don’t like fashion, but it’s necessary,” says Yohji. He is always inspired by people, not abstract images, and believes that there is a strong connection between street and high fashion.

He was one of the first to launch the Y-3 clothing line with Adidas, making Yamamoto clothing affordable to the middle class.

However, Yohji Yamamoto is not limited to the podium. He worked on the design of the classical operas Madame Butterfly and Tristan and Isolde. Takeshi Kitano turned to him to design the costumes for the characters in The Dolls - and was so inspired by his collaboration with the famous designers that, influenced by his designs, he changed the plot of the film.

Journalists barely managed to find out that Yohji has an ex-wife (the marriage broke up pretty quickly, and since then Yamamoto was no longer officially married) and three children from different women - all Yamamoto's offspring are engaged in design. He lives with his mother. Yohji himself carefully protects his personal life from outside interference. A man of mystery, he recently decided to lift the veil of secrecy and tell the world his secrets by writing an autobiography with the disturbing title My Dear Bomb.

He is now 74 years old. In the evenings, he sips expensive wine and listens to the music of Bob Dylan. He has a black belt in karate and several four-legged friends. He is actively working on new collections and dreams of becoming either a gangster or an actor in the future - but not very famous, the roles of the third plan will be enough for him.

I was able to conquer the world and another Japanese. it Issei Miyake - the designer who created origami clothing and later became a philosopher