Yohji Yamamoto

[softgrey]

very good and informative article---
thank you runner...

i am glad that there is more and more video of yohji giving interviews and speaking about his work and what inspires him...i can almost hear him speaking to this interviewer now...

i know that, for me, i am starting to get a sense of who he is and where it all comes from...
and i think what he says is right...
the clothes don't lie...
i think you can see all of it in the clothes...
so i think that in some ways, i already knew everything before he explained it...
but not really---
i just had the 'sense' of it all...i could feel some of these things that he talks about now...

so it is really fascinating for me to know what is true and what is only something that i imagined...

...

 

[runner]

the godmother behind the company
yy and aa from 1988
his guitars


fashionnews

 

[runner]

i know that, for me, i am starting to get a sense of who he is and where it all comes from...
and i think what he says is right...
the clothes don't lie...
i think you can see all of it in the clothes...
so i think that in some ways, i already knew everything before he explained it...
but not really---
i just had the 'sense' of it all...i could feel some of these things that he talks about now...

so it is really fascinating for me to know what is true and what is only something that i imagined...

...

yes but it's "something that you imagined" that I'd like to listen to. perhaps someone else and yohji too would listen to it with delight.
once rimbaud wrote "I is an other" or "I is another". and there was a japanese writer named ango sakaguchi who used to have a similar thought. ango is the man yohji adores. what ango had been is what yohji wanted to be. but yohji thought he was not as good at writing as ango. that's why he has been doing it by way of designing clothes.

he seems to especially love and relate to this short story by ango, "in the forest, under cherries in full bloom".
found one english translation of it on the site scribd and here is an excerpt from there.
the feeling he put into clothes might have been the coldness felt clearly in the infinity or the fleshly warmth felt inside.

newyorkphotofestival

 

[runner]

photo courtesy softgrey

softgrey.blogspot

 

[softgrey]

kind of amazing how you used my own photo to illustrate your point runner...


using that image does make this passage very clear to me though...
*excerpts*
'When he was about to touch her face, he thought something strange happened...there was nothing under his hand...no trace of the woman left...'

something amazing and strange happened to me when i went to see the yohji exhibit in london where that picture was taken...
to give you some idea of how powerful it was to experience the dress and its reflection in the boiler room of that old power station which had been filled with water...
i can only say this...
as the boatman rowed me around the dark, reflective space...
i leaned over the edge of the tiny rowboat trying to see down into the water where the reflection ended...
it seemed to go on forever... i was pulled from my seat....
and, for a moment, i felt as though i were being pulled into the watery depths...
destined to spend eternity frozen below the surface along with this glowing apparition...
and the truth is, a big part of me wanted to go there...to be with her...
i had to make a concerted effort to pull myself back into the boat...
...

there was definitely the feeling of a spirit frozen in time...
some pirate princess who haunted the place...
i could feel it---

...


so- i guess that is what it was like in my imagination, without knowing these other things that you have brought to the conversation runner...
and, now that you mention it...
i suppose it might be something interesting for yohji to know...
and i am flattered that you would want to know as well...

 

[runner]

thank you very much for sharing, softgrey
glad you managed to hold yourself back and didn't merge into it.
I guess artistic impression sometimes makes a tear that opens into the mind.
it can be good ventilation. something fresh (or very old, long-forgotten) flows in from it and eases the stiffness in the mind.
but it can also be a leak through which the self starts to drain away.
if the experience is so powerful, that may be a glorious but slightly dangerous moment where individuality is being weakened for reorganization with its outline blurred.



S/S 1995
my scan

 

[runner]

his use of silk (F/W 94), felt (F/W 96), and leather (F/W 08)


my scans

 

[runner]

from marie claire japon circa 1982


yoshihikoueda.com

 

[runner]

F/W 84, marc ascoli × max vadukul (another version of the image posted a few pages back)

F/W 97, M/M × paolo roversi



my scans

 

[runner]

one more

 

[softgrey]

runner---
what is that last pic?
who is that with yohji?...


i believe this spring 1990 collection was dedicated to choreographer pina bausch...






Campaign: Yohji Yamamoto
Season: Spring 1990
Photographer: Nick Knight

 

[softgrey]

photo by sarah moon
liquidnight.tumblr.com

 

[runner]

I guess it's some y's campaign.
(as we know, yohji does karate and used to do it rather seriously. at one time, the ground floor of the YY inc building was used as a dojo (a hall where karate is practiced). and somewhere there should also be some images of him performing karate kata naked to the waist.)
I'm not sure who it is with him, but it looks like shohei otsuka, limi's husband, ceo of the company now.

thank you for the images softgrey
don't you have some clippings from pina bausch/yohji editorial series?

reminds me of "shakespeare the sonnets (presented last fall)". the costumes are yohji yamamoto.


nntt.jac.go.jp

 

[softgrey]

thank you for explaining

i do have some clippings- yes!...
**the first way i found out about pina bausch was through you, runner...
and now i just went to see the wim wenders film about her and her dance company...


those images from the shakespeare performance are amazing...
some of the clothes that didn't make complete sense on the runway make perfect sense in the context of a theatre performance...

i didn't manage to get anything from yohji from this fall collection...
there was a dress that i had my eye on......

 

[Flashbang]

Surface May/June 2012



ebookee.org

 

[Psylocke]

"You should feel like you're on Yohji Street and this is what life would be like if everyone wore Yohji for a day."

^Haha, love this description of that exhibition in Isreal. Sounds like fun.

Is the article really only 1 page long although it's the cover story? Too bad. But thanks for posting, Flashbang

 

[Psylocke]

Yohji Turns Director
Ella Alexander 01 May 2012 0 comments

YOHJI YAMAMOTO is following in the footsteps of Tom Ford and creating his first feature film. The designer, who will direct the project, has already commissioned a scriptwriter and plans to have the film completed in the next two years.

"It's very secret," he said during a talk at Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography last weekend.

Although Yamamoto appeared as the subject of fashion documentary This Is My Dream, which was released last year, his directorial debut will not focus on himself. The designer also added that he doesn't like creating film costumes.

"I don't want to kill the characters of the actors and actresses with my ego," Yamamoto told WWD. "[Costume designers] have to know which fashions and which trends were running at which time, so their knowledge of past clothing is sometimes better than ours."

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/05/01/yohji-yamamoto-creates-first-feature-film

Sounds exciting!

 

[MulletProof]

^ I know.. his pieces always seem to have such a narrative about it.. and I love his interest for working men of different eras and the pictures he collects (seen on Notes on Cities and Clothes), I can't wait to see the result of this.. and ouch at the ego comment, Ford.

 

[softgrey]

Yohji Yamamoto to Direct First Feature Film
By Katya Foreman <http://www.wwd.com/wwd-masthead/katya-foreman-5283122>
http://www.wwd.com/fashion-news/fas...-first-feature-film-5882160?navSection=issues <javascript:void(0);>
HYERES, France — Yohji Yamamoto is working on his first feature film.

The designer spoke of this and other new ventures during a discussion on fashion and cinema with French director Christophe Honoré at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography.

“I’ll do music. I’ll do painting. Then, finally, I’ll do film,” Yamamoto told WWD when asked what future projects he was working on.

He will don the director’s cap for the movie, which he said is not based on himself. Yamamoto has commissioned somebody to write the script and expects to have the film wrapped up in two years at the earliest. “It’s very secret,” he said.

During the discussion, the designer, whose creations have featured in a handful of films, including the Takeshi Kitano-helmed “Dolls,” told the audience that he does not like creating clothes for the cinema.

“I don’t want to kill the characters of the actors and actresses with my ego,” said Yamamoto, for whom fashion and costume design are distinct professions. “[Costume designers] have to know which fashions and which trends were running at which time, so their knowledge of past clothing is sometimes better than ours.”

But he still finds the work of certain costume designers hard on the eyes. “Have you ever experienced after starting to watch a movie that because of the ugly costumes, you cannot keep on watching? Have you ever experienced that? I have a lot. So in that respect costume [design] is very important,” said Yamamoto.

The designer also mentioned director Wim Wenders, whom he sees as a brother, describing the personal struggle he went through when Wenders asked him to design 500 costumes for his film “Until the End of the World” in the early Nineties. “From the beginning I was tired.…I had to create everything, even very normal jackets and suits to try to make it not look too much Yohji Yamamoto, I really suffered from the beginning,” he said. “It was a moment when [Wenders] had made a big hit, ‘Wings of Desire,’ and many sponsors wanted to pay for his new movie, so he was very rich and he could ask me to make 500 outfits.

“He came to Tokyo one day.…He asked me to pick him up from his hotel and while we were driving along in the car he started talking to me. ‘Yohji, maybe you sometimes have a job and [you realize] that this is a mistake, but you have to finish it’.…I was driving and was, like, ‘Oh yes, I do,’” smiled the designer, before pausing to add, “Sometimes rich movies make mistakes.”

wwd.com

 

[ultramarine]

You beat me to it!

This is gonna be MAJOR!