1970s-1990s The Japanese Avant-garde
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ChicParisienne
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Thanks Drusilla, mishahoi and user500!!
So he DID worked with Wim Wenders & Pina Bausch..looks like I need to look for that Kitano film
So he DID worked with Wim Wenders & Pina Bausch..looks like I need to look for that Kitano film
softgrey
flaunt the imperfection
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thank you runner...
for explaining and also for scanning them that way so we could see the images better...
*i am always looking for interesting examples of lookbooks/catalogs...
not for anything in particular...just because i am curious...
chicparisienne---
DOLLS is a beautiful film...
but is also very sad...
it still breaks my heart to think about it...
so, so sad....
...rqfsimons---
thanks for those really unusual and rare images...!
they are wonderful...
looking at the images in this thread...
i just have to comment on how much i prefer yohji's work in black and white...
the silhouette is so important to his designs and they are just so much more dramatic and impactful when there is no pattern or colour to distract the eye...
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Drusilla_
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GAP Japan used to publish full sets of runway collections from all the major fashion weeks in the 90s - their Paris books should feature full collections of Comme, Yohji, Issey Miyake and Junya Watanabe.
I have their SS96 book but it is MASSIVE, longer than my forearm and too large to fit into my tiny rubbish scanner. Here is one image I managed to scan from it, from the Yohji SS96 collection:
I have their SS96 book but it is MASSIVE, longer than my forearm and too large to fit into my tiny rubbish scanner. Here is one image I managed to scan from it, from the Yohji SS96 collection:
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runner
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thanks user500 for more images
and thank you very much Drusilla for the scan of the massive book
how about snapshots ?
softgrey what I just remembered is that raf simons's lookbook maybe from S/S 97 was edited like a picture book for kids, made of thick paper/pasteboard.
also luc's catalog for that cracking collection.
it was really heavy industrial pasteboards coarsely printed and bound with heavy metal bolt, nut, and washers which are sort of trademark of the label.
about designers for stages/films, this is what rei did.
" I liked the way the shapes of
the costumes change on the bodies,
if you saw the person from the front,
you expect a certain familiar image.
But when a person turns around,
you see a totally different image
which is quite unexpected from the shape of the costume.
And that was such a delight to my eyes. "
- merce cunningham
kirin
homecatv
livedoor
heibonshatoday
and thank you very much Drusilla for the scan of the massive book
how about snapshots ?
softgrey what I just remembered is that raf simons's lookbook maybe from S/S 97 was edited like a picture book for kids, made of thick paper/pasteboard.
also luc's catalog for that cracking collection.
it was really heavy industrial pasteboards coarsely printed and bound with heavy metal bolt, nut, and washers which are sort of trademark of the label.
about designers for stages/films, this is what rei did.
merce.org
" I liked the way the shapes of
the costumes change on the bodies,
if you saw the person from the front,
you expect a certain familiar image.
But when a person turns around,
you see a totally different image
which is quite unexpected from the shape of the costume.
And that was such a delight to my eyes. "
- merce cunningham
kirin
homecatv
livedoor
heibonshatoday
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softgrey
flaunt the imperfection
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thanks for all the images...
that yohji look is so elegant and timeless...
i'd love to wear that whole thing!
i really enjoy the dance costumes...
i find that the costumes really make a difference in my level of enjoyment of any performance...
that yohji look is so elegant and timeless...
i'd love to wear that whole thing!
i really enjoy the dance costumes...
i find that the costumes really make a difference in my level of enjoyment of any performance...
fashion.fashoff
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mid 80s yamamoto jacket. thick wool w/large floppy lapels
early 90s issey miyake jacket (blend of: wool, silk, nylon, polyurethane)
comme des garçons tee, cotton & elastic, 1984:
pics by me
early 90s issey miyake jacket (blend of: wool, silk, nylon, polyurethane)
comme des garçons tee, cotton & elastic, 1984:
pics by me
softgrey
flaunt the imperfection
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it's so sad that we don't have the best documentation from the collections that are pre- digital...
thx for posting those images user500 and fash:
fash- the issey miyake ivory piece is so interesting...
do you have anymore pics of that-
i'm curious how it looks on and what the body shape is...
what happens if you lie the jacket down flat?
tia...
thx for posting those images user500 and fash:
fash- the issey miyake ivory piece is so interesting...
do you have anymore pics of that-
i'm curious how it looks on and what the body shape is...
what happens if you lie the jacket down flat?
tia...
softgrey
flaunt the imperfection
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amazing article i found from last year's NYTimes...by ruth laferla
I went to see this exhibit...
the vintage CDG look in the last image was definitely the highlight of the show...
"all roads lead to rei"...
i love that!!...
I went to see this exhibit...
the vintage CDG look in the last image was definitely the highlight of the show...
"all roads lead to rei"...
i love that!!...
Paying Homage to Japan’s Raw Edges
The Museum at FIT, New York
An exhibition reintroduces renegades like Rei Kawakubo, below, and on mannequins, also below, and Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara (with corset), on mannequins, above.
By RUTH LA FERLA
Published: October 6, 2010
“THE eye adjusts,” as fashion people say, a truism routinely exploited in defense of styles so extreme that they often affront conventional tastes. It took some adjusting indeed to digest and assimilate the groundbreaking trends spawned in Japan in the early 1980s — a period of fashion revolt that ushered in radical innovations like breastplates and street-sweeping skirts.
Catwalking.com
Balenciaga, spring 2011.
The Museum at FIT, New York
The work of Rei Kawakubo on mannequins.
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times
Rick Owens, spring 2011.
The Museum at FIT, New York
Those pioneering inventions — more “bleeding edge” than cutting edge, according to the fashion historian Valerie Steele — are highlighted in “Japan Fashion Now,” an exhibition at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, one that traces the Japanese influence on runways and urban streets.
The exhibition, conceived and organized by Ms. Steele, the museum’s director, showcases contemporary designers, among them avant-garde labels like Phenomenon, whose designer, known as Big-O, has offered swirling skirts for men; and Chitose Abe, whose eccentric designs for Sacai appear to be a hybrid of beat-up old sweaters and silk shirts. Also represented are modern Tokyo’s quirky fashion subcultures, some inspired by manga or anime; others, like the mori (forest) girls, are a bizarre pastiche of Central European folkloric costume pieces.
Perhaps most tellingly, the show reintroduces the designs of renegades like Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto, designers who gained cult followings by dispensing with the hallmark nipped waists and contour-hugging fabrics of traditional Western fashion in favor of the asymmetric, overscale and patently distressed looks that ushered in a brash new age.
Dismissed in their day as sexless and ungainly, these wayward experiments look remarkably relevant — not surprising since many have resurfaced on the catwalks, recast and updated for a modern eye.
“The Japanese aesthetic is really resonating right now,” said Sharon Graubard, a senior executive with Stylesight, a trend forecasting firm in New York. On the runways and in the streets, “all roads lead to Rei,” Ms. Graubard observed, a reference to fashion’s reborn affinity for raw edges, shredded fabrics and, in her phrase, “a tremendous movement of silhouettes away from the body.
“The Japanese introduced all that in the ’80s,” she said, “and set us on a course for where we are today.”
The spring collections unveiled in Paris teem with allusions to the Japanese vanguard. Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga paid subtle homage to Ms. Kawakubo in a collection highlighted by the fusion of techno and hand-wrought fabrics, asymmetries, elephantine houndstooth patterns and cropped pants worn with chunky flat-sole shoes.
Gareth Pugh paraded a panoply of jackets with pointy panels and uneven hems, dresses that ballooned at the base and flyaway kimono shapes, each look punctuated by hair fastened at the crown in a samurai topknot.
Even Rick Owens owed a more obvious than usual debt to the Japanese in the leather cutaway vests he paired with long, gathered skirts, and the cowled shrugs that he layered over voluminous black gowns.
New Yorkers, too, alluded to the Japan of the 1980s and early ’90s: There were revamped utility looks at Alexander Wang; Comme des Garçons-style ombréd silks at Proenza Schouler; mismatched patterns and layers and ballooning shapes at Rodarte.
Styles like these appeal to New Yorkers, young and not so young, who wear thick-soled shoes with truncated pants and toy with wrapping, layering and shredding — the hallmarks of fashion deconstruction. It would be hard to wander through the bohemian enclaves of the East Village or TriBeCa these days without sighting variations on the anthracite-colored, shroudlike garments introduced in Tokyo more than three decades ago.
Such inspirations are not unprecedented. Japanese influences have cropped up repeatedly in the not-so-distant past, Ms. Steele pointed out. “They have entered the fashion vocabulary for all time,” she said. “If you look at fashion as a whole, you get a palimpsest — layer upon layer of influences. And Japan is usually somewhere in that picture.”
More vividly now than ever, it seems. The deliberate imperfections, irregular surfaces and up-and-down hemlines strike style watchers as an antidote to overexposed and overtly commercial Western styles.
“There has been this exhaustion with the catalog of Western fashion,” said Claire Hamilton, a trend analyst with the forecasting firm WGSN. “In order to be distinctive in this hyper-commercial environment, designers at the high end need to move beyond traditional references,” she said, and to embrace the exotic or esoteric. Ms. Hamilton ascribed a renewed fascination with Japan in part to a rejection of trend-chasing in favor of looks perceived as authentic, that hold up over time.
In the 1980s, when Ms. Steele first wore Mr. Yamamoto’s capacious dark dresses, her friends were aghast, she recalled. “What’s that big black thing you’re wearing?” she was asked repeatedly. “But so much has been assimilated into fashion,” she said the other day. Now when she wears variations on those styles, she is more apt to be greeted with admiration. “People have stopped making fun of me,” she said. “Instead they’re exclaiming, ‘Ooh, how elegant you look.’ ”
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fashion.fashoff
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it's so sad that we don't have the best documentation from the collections that are pre- digital...
thx for posting those images user500 and fash:
fash- the issey miyake ivory piece is so interesting...
do you have anymore pics of that-
i'm curious how it looks on and what the body shape is...
what happens if you lie the jacket down flat?
tia...
hi soft...sorry it took me so long to take more pix
here is the issey piece front & back on a dress form and flat and open. it has an interesting big collar, almost a hood but not quite.
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