I Am Fame - Notorious Everything

Part of a pioneering fashion sensibility that erupted onto the Parisian catwalks of the early 1980s, Yohji Yamamoto has a philosophical approach to fashion that makes him interested in more than just covering the body: there has to be some interaction between the body, the wearer, and the essential spirit of the designer. With Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, Yamamoto is exploring new ways of dressing by synthesizing Western clothing archetypes and indigenous Japanese clothing. Refusing to accept traditional ideas of female sexual display and reacting against the Western notion of female glamour as expressed in titillating figure-hugging garments, Yamamoto employs a method of layering, draping, and wrapping the body, disguising it with somber, unstructured, swathed garments based on the kimono that ignore the usual accentuation points.

Uncompromising to Western eyes, Yamamoto is in fact investigatingthe traditional Japanese conviction in beauty being not naturally givenbut expressed through the manipulation of the possibilities of thecolours and materials of garments. Consequently, Yamamoto’s clothingconstruction is viewed in the round rather than vertically, not fromthe neck down as in Western fashion, but a rectilinear, two dimensional approach that explores the visual appeal of asymmetry,the notion of the picturesque that plays an important part in Japanesedesign philosophy where irregular forms are appreciated for their lackof artifice and thus closeness to nature. Therefore, Yamamoto’s garments have strange flaps, pockets, and layers, lopsided collars and hems, set off by the body in motion, and the labels inside are inscribed with the epithet, “There is nothing so boring as a neat and tidy look.”