Yohji Yamamoto: 'Just Clothes' from the inside out New Feature
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
PARIS So much is made of fashion's flamboyant presence - in catwalk extravaganzas, celebrity gowns or shiny stores - and so little of its process. It is therefore an imaginative stroke to display in a museum the inner and outer layers of Yohji Yamamoto's work, as a recreation of his chaotic office and workrooms and then the finished products in clean, white light.
"Yohji Yamamoto - Juste des vêtements" ( "Just clothes") in Paris follows another exhibition in Florence in January. Although the new show at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile (until Aug. 28) contains 85 percent of the same clothes, according to its curator Olivier Saillard, the effect is quite different. Instead of the Japanese designer's classics holding their own among marbled sculptures or facing off oil painted portraits in the Florentine show, Paris shows us first the underbelly of the romantic and intriguingly made clothes.
From the bales of fabrics piled at the entrance - proving Yamamoto's claim that he likes black, white and strong colors - through garments hanging on racks, sketches scattered on chairs and video screens playing simultaneously 25 years of collections, the show pulls you into Yamamoto's world. As well as his own workspace, the office of the designer's longtime collaborator Madame Shimosako is lovingly recreated, books, papers, cigarettes, candies and all.
The multimedia input, with 10 hours worth of shows and a screening of a seminal 1989 film by the German cinéaste Wim Wenders, does its best to get you inside the head of a designer who has always preferred to let his work speak for itself.
On the upper floor, the 80 outfits do just that. And instead of the usual low-light museum gloom to protect fabrics, every shawl-collared coat, furry hat or draped dress is lit by eye-popping neon bands. This installation by Masao Nihei could be a stand-alone work of modern art.
Yet despite its energy and imagination, the show, as so often with current fashion exhibits, lacks a vital element: where Yamamoto stands in relation to his design peers. And in his particular case, what his Japanese roots have brought into flower.
To understand the Asiatic side of his work you have to cross the Rue de Rivoli to the Joyce Galerie at 168 Galerie Valois in the Jardins du Palais Royal. There, in double fabrics that give a sliding optical illusion to coin dot kimonos, Yamamoto's work is included among the creations of Chiso, the traditional Kyoto silk and kimono supplier. Its heritage of prints of flying cranes, russet autumn leaves and burgeoning summer flowers goes back 450 years.
In the museum show, the first reference to Japanese tradition is in 1995 when Yamamoto used the "shibori" or tie and dye technique to create crunched circles of color. The designer recalls his epiphany as he faced his native culture directly.
"For a long time I didn't want to touch it - I am Japanese and I didn't want to do souvenirs," says Yamamoto. "Then one day, I thought it is time to touch it and to break all my taboos - kimonos, body fit, high heels."
Yamamoto as iconoclast never really comes center stage in the exhibition, partly because it is, according to Saillard, so difficult to find examples of the torn-edged, aggressively asymmetric, intensely black work from the 1980s. But the show also lacks a visual context to explain how radically Yamamoto and his onetime partner Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons differed from their contemporaries. Poetic fashion photographs from Paolo Roversi or Nick Knight of Yamamoto's work might have included their antithesis: the sharp-shouldered chic, the 1980s opulence and power-woman feminism of designers such as Karl Lagerfeld in his debut years at Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler and Yves Saint Laurent.
As shown, it is hard to absorb the shock waves caused by the black shrouds, the idea of finding elegance in the unfinished and enveloping rather than tracing the contours of the body.
Saillard believes that at the heart of Yamamoto's aesthetic is a Japanese concept that "to create you must destroy" and that one of his significant fashion contributions is the idea that their should be "air and space between body and clothes." The curator also says that so strong is the designer's personal vision that it was difficult to date the garments.
The display is powerful when it shows Yamamoto's ongoing fascination with Paris couture. Drawing on the museum archives, outfits from Balenciaga, Dior, Madame Grès, Schiaparelli and Madeleine Vionnet are shown beside the Japanese designer's sometimes whimsical but always technically astute versions. In a different and revealing juxtaposition, Saillard brought out Hungarian costumes to display beside chunky sweaters they inspired and to enforce the message that "ethnic clothes are the only kind that Yohji collects."
Another first in this exhibition is dear to Yamamoto's heart: the idea that some clothes on show have broken out of the glass cases and can be touched and stroked.
"Touch is the most important thing in my clothes," he says.
AN all-new opportunity to get inside the head of Yohji Yamamoto is opening in Paris this week. Juste des Vetements (Just Clothes), has recreated the designer's Tokyo workshop in a bid to give visitors the chance to see how his creative process works from start to finish. In amongst 18th and 19th Century pieces of art, more than 100 of Yohji's outfits will hang within reach, so that his fans can get close enough to touch. "We wanted to surprise the public and show them all the steps from the material to the final design," said Yohji spokesperson Nathalie Ours. And for the designer himself, who has famously taken inspiration from all walks of life and countless historical periods throughout his 49-collection career, the retrospective is more than fitting. "If I could make a collection to show the passing of time I would be very happy," he said. "Because old clothes are always newly designed. Designing time is my dream." Juste des Vetements will run from April 13 to August 28 at the Musée de la Mode.
