1970s-1990s The Japanese Avant-garde

[electricladyland]

^^ damn she's smart B)

 

[Melisande]

Also, like it or not, we cannot exclude from our discussion of "Japanese designers in general" Hanae Mori, Kenzo, Junko Shimada, Yuki Torii, Kansai Watanabe, et.al as Japanese designers who have been showing in Paris for decades. None of whom are conceptual or austere in the least.

 

[electricladyland]

that's hot B)

 

[Melisande]

... thanks electric!

 

[Johnny]

I agree with electricll.....great post(s) Melisande. Your distinctions between the three "big" Japanese designers seem very valid to me. Comme has traditionally been expresly conceptual. Almost none of their advertising has any pictures of the clothing..rather it's just seemingly abstract images of some sympathy with the thinking behind the particular collection. It's more often than not very difficult to see any connection between the clothes and those images. You see this still in the store flyers for the new collections, and in the show invitations. You really couldn't guess what the clothes are going to look like just be looking at these. YY and IM have never really been like that, and are not concerned with that level of conceptualism.

 

[Melisande]

Also, like it or not, we cannot exclude from our discussion of "Japanese designers in general" Hanae Mori, Kenzo, Junko Shimada, Yuki Torii, Kansai Watanabe, et.al as Japanese designers who have been showing in Paris for decades. None of whom are conceptual or austere in the least.

Oops I just realized what I typed in...I mean Kansai Yamamoto of course (and I don't think he showed in Paris many times either...but he's been active internationally is what I meant)

Thanks Johnny, I'm so glad you agree! I think Junya Watanabe is conceptual too, but really, now that I think of it, perhaps conceptual designers are actually fewer in Japan than one may think. Japan has too much of an ingrained tradition of highly perfected romantic aestheticism and spirituality for us to be really conceptual as a whole culture...we highly value "kansei"--what may be described as artistic sensitivity or instinctive sense--as opposed to "risei", or logical thinking.

 

[JuiceMajor]

Loads to catch up...interesting

 

[tott]

Great posts, Melisande! Thanks for posting, it's so nice to get an "insider" point of view!

And I really agree with your assessments about the different designers...

 

[Honey~Blade]

Melisande, thank you for such great posts. I feel I have learned alot from you. Thank you

 

[Melisande]

Aww, thanks everyone! So glad my ramblings were of interest...
it's a very interesting topic after all.

 

[softgrey]

great musings melisande...

thank you for your input...
now i want to visit japan even more...
...
any place that values kansei seems like a little bit of heaven to me...
i think the italians are like that as well...
maybe that is why i feel the connection and the pull...

...
but the japanese culture still seems sort of 'uptight' compared to the italians...
i don't know...
from the outside it doesn't appear very instinctual...it appears almost methodical...
maybe a a bit 'fussy'...
with everything always 'just so'...
not very relaxed or instinctual or poetic...
it's all very 'controlled'....if that makes sense...

maybe it's a different kind of poetry...
...either way...
i find it all very fascinating and appealing...

 

[Melisande]

great musings melisande...

thank you for your input...
now i want to visit japan even more...
...
any place that values kansei seems like a little bit of heaven to me...
i think the italians are like that as well...
maybe that is why i feel the connection and the pull...

...
but the japanese culture still seems sort of 'uptight' compared to the italians...
i don't know...
from the outside it doesn't appear very instinctual...it appears almost methodical...
maybe a a bit 'fussy'...
with everything always 'just so'...
not very relaxed or instinctual or poetic...
it's all very 'controlled'....if that makes sense...

maybe it's a different kind of poetry...
...either way...
i find it all very fascinating and appealing...

Ooooh, not poetic?? I may have to get violent here!

But thanks Softie, I know what you mean. In fact, I was going to mention Italy as well, as a culture which traditionally values kansei and highly developed aesthetics in daily life. But instictual doesn't have to be completely free and expressionistic...something choreographed can be instinctual and poetic and passionate...like ballet, music...otherwise, it's just robotic reproduction. The human soul and kansei of the creator must always overflow in the final product. I think the most basic difference between Italian and Japanese aesthetics is that the same amount of passion, refinement and poetry is there, but the Japanese traditionally "condense" the same passion into a single line (calligraphy), a single word (Haikus are a good example), or a single movement as in Noh theatre, which is just as passionate as opera.

 

[softgrey]

i absolutely see what you mean melisande...

i have to say...
as i have gone past the 'surface' of japanese culture...
i have been pleasantly surprised....
to find exactly what you are talking about...

in my previous post...
i was speaking more about how it seemed before i started to understand more about it...
and i cannot deny being really surprised to find that passion and poetry beneath the surface...
i had NO idea...

as you mentioned...
the italians invented opera....
so i am accustomed to huge sweeping displays of emotion...
this almost 'minimalist' japanese approach is something different for me...


i think that is actually one of the things that intrigues me most...
how the japanese can sometimes manage to convey so very much, even in the smallest of gestures ...
and with so few words...

to be able to cut right through to the 'heart' of the matter...
it is very impressive to someone like me...

i find it rather incredible and extremely inspiring......
*i wish i could do it too...

 

[Melisande]

That's a wonderfully gracious post Softgrey, thank you... I KNEW you were hiding something when you said you didn't see the poetry in Japanese art!

Opera...huge sweeping displays of emotion...mmm, anche questo mi piace tanto! Gotta love it. I think many Japanese would say the same as you about wishing they could pull off Italian expression, depth and elegance.

OT, but did you know that the head designer at Pininfarina, in charge of designing Ferraris and Maserati, is Japanese? I thought it was interesting.

 

[runner]

Father-daughter challenge
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2006


TOKYO He is one of the world's most distinguished designers; she is a strong-minded young creator with an independent streak. And Yohji Yamamoto and his daughter Limi Feu have reached crunch point.

Limi, who is 31 and a mother of two, established her fashion line within the family company. Its strong, womanly clothes challenge the male/female status quo with slouchy pockets on baggy pants, abstracted suspenders on overalls and lace inserts that can mean delicate transparency or a saucy lingerie frill at the back.

"I have been showing what I can do as a daughter of Yohji and as a young fashion designer," says Limi, as she is known. She puts her position more starkly when she claims that "two or three years ago, even if Yohji had died, I could not get out of the relationship."

But now the spirited daughter wants to set up a business with her husband independently of the Yohji Yamamoto brand.

For the namesake designer, it is an oedipal conflict in reverse.

"For the moment, she wants to be independent totally - I want her to go out from my company at some stage," Yohji says. "Yet sometimes I dream about if she could take my place at the head of the company. This is a very crucial moment for us. She wants to challenge me and she wants to beat me," he continues. "But having 30 years experience, creating and selling, I know it is very, very tough. I would like to help - if she wants it. But I don't want to say 'Limi, Let me help.'"

Limi's unfolding drama is essentially the story of Tokyo's young fashion generation: She yearns to grow her business globally, like her father and his Japanese peers. But it is hard now to penetrate saturated department stores, as it was for the previous generation to make shops take notice of them.

Or, as Yohji puts it: "When I started my career, there was nothing - yet everything was possible - and at the same time impossible." Father and daughter now face a similar impasse.

from iht.com

 

[purexelegance]

Also, like it or not, we cannot exclude from our discussion of "Japanese designers in general" Hanae Mori, Kenzo, Junko Shimada, Yuki Torii, Kansai Watanabe, et.al as Japanese designers who have been showing in Paris for decades. None of whom are conceptual or austere in the least.

That is most definitely true... I will most likely be going to a Japanese college in Tokyo next year, so I hope to see more Japanese fashion stuff.

It's weird how Japanese designers don't get that much PR as compared to other fashion houses. I think they deserve much more respect than some of the brands that are popularized right now.

My mother was a huge Junko Shimada, Yuki Torii and Jun Ashida (who is/was the royal family's designer i believe) so I have much vintage pieces lying around the house. My mom is going to get rid of most of them though... except a couple of pieces.

This is a little off topic, but...

I personally think that when I look at Japanese fashion right now, it feels as if everyone wears the same kind of clothing and holds the same monogrammed Louis Vuitton or Dior. I sometimes wonder where Japanese fashion went when I see the overall picture.

But then, the greatest thing about Japanese fashion is that everyone wears whatever they want to and many people aren't afraid to be outside of the box. They develop their own fashion sense and wear vibrant colors, unlike Americans who wear very similar looking and monotone colors.

 

[nqth]

Thanks for the posts, especially Melisande's input:-) I can't read everything right now and think more about it. I am such in a hurry:-) But I'll come back.

I read a book about Japan writen by Barthes a long time ago, and remember one thing. He said there are alot of signs, gestures which doesn't necessarily mean anything. (Which reminds me of a CdG's famous statement (in abs. diff. context the meaning is that there is no meaning:-)

Signs are often perceived without emotions. Not like words. I don't know how much he was right, or wrong:-)

 

[runner]

LIMI SPEAKS
'Overcome' scion shines in her own quirky way
November 13, 2005
By KAORI SHOJI



She may be Yohji's daughter, but Limi Yamamoto wasn't exactly born clutching a silver spoon. Her parents got divorced when she turned 2 years old, and the next 15 years were spent in a small town in Kyushu, where she saw her father once every three years or so.

Then, in her senior year in high school, Yohji took Limi to New York to show his collection. It was the first time she had seen her father's work on the runway, and Limi recalls: "I was so overcome, I just started crying."

Then and there she decided to become a designer, though she had had no prior ambitions to do so.

"I was far from being fashionable. I thought the whole business of decorating oneself was phony and tacky," she says of herself before that moment.

Now 31, Limi Yamamoto has matured into one of the most charismatic designers of her generation, and helms her own brand called LIMI feu, with eight outlets nationwide including flagship boutiques in Tokyo -- one in upscale Daikanyama and the other in young hipster Harajuku. The latter venue has become a gathering spot for the alternative Harajuku girl: a little tough, a little cerebral, markedly more complex and sophisticated than the crowd shopping at BAPY or on Takeshita-dori. In fact, they seem a lot like Limi when she first started out as a patternist in Yohji's company. ("Yohji would always walk into the pattern room just when I was munching on snacks and calling a friend," she recalls with a laugh.)

She made her Tokyo Collection debut in 2000, at age 24. Back then the brand was called Y's bis, and Limi and Yohji fans were struck by the designs that seemed to take the essential components of Yohji's designs and translate/edit them for young women. The prices, too, were more affordable than her father's stuff. Indeed, she herself says, "I still can't get over how expensive designer brands are, and the lengths women go to to buy them. Normal, working single women can't spend that much on clothes."

This isn't to say that LIMI feu is hugely affordable -- it's not. But the prices are set within a range that young women can reach, with marginally less damage to their wallets. (A beautifully cut white shirt, for example, will set you back less than 20,000 yen, and most jackets are set between 30,000 yen and 60,000 yen.)

In contrast to Yamamoto Sr., who has consistently sought to define and redefine his personal notion of the ideal woman (clean, sharp, mysterious, muting her sexuality under the voluminous folds of her Yohji dress), Limi has actively tried to bend current standards of Japanese femininity to match her own.

"I'm a woman and know how women feel. This is what I have going for me -- my father can't compete with that."

Accordingly, Limi's works have evolved from reinterpretations of her father's work to reflecting her own inner landscape. Now married and the mother of two babies (1- and 2-years old), Limi's latest 2006 Spring/Summer Collection that she showcased in Tokyo last week explores once again what it means to be a Japanese woman living and working in this workcentric land.

This time she reached out to all segments of the populace, from teenager to grandmother -- and the effect is at once intimate and universal. Limi had always had particular tastes in assembling her models and, unlike her fellow designers (or her father), she's famed for working almost exclusively with a trusted stable of Japanese models -- though one time she put together a small corps of teenage girls, all under 160 cm tall. For many in the audience it was obviously quite arresting to see the young, tiny young ladies on the runway, but to critics who complained about "amateurishness," Limi replied: "I design my clothes for Japanese women, who are by definition short-statured and skinny. Why pretend otherwise?"

In this latest collection, small gasps erupted from the audience as models in their 40s, 50s and 60s strode the runway -- in Limi's signature style of cerebral street girl. Among them was actress Jun Togawa, famed for her over-the-top, self-destructive lifestyle. Donning a flounced-out, black lace skirt (the collection's theme item) Togawa was stunning: a matured, defiant Alice in Wonderland dressed for a second round of tea with the Mad Hatter.

"This time, I wanted to demonstrate how cool older women can be," said Limi. "I was really happy about the result -- they looked fabulous, like they had just pulled these clothes out of their closets and worn them because they happened to feel like it. These women are inspiring for me, they give me something to aim for."

Limi says she is probably at the busiest time of her life: struggling to juggle family and work and still maintain her creativeness -- and the muted, crazy energy that defines her work.

Is she interested in taking her work overseas? "Not for the moment. To me, the Japanese working woman is the most demanding, fashion-conscious consumer in the world. I feel that I have to convince her first, before I convince anyone else."

from japantimes.co.jp

 

[SpoonHeasy]

Love the posts here. I live in Japan for a while and I wish I had learned more about Japanese designers when I was there.

 

[softgrey]

thank you runner...

loved the article about limi...
maybe it should be reposted in her thread?...
although i like it here because of how it relates to yohji's work...