Y's. Spring 2019 – Paris Fashion Week

(Images from Y's promotion lookbook)

Y's delivered its Read-to-Wear Spring 2019 collection during Paris Fashion Week, choosing the non runway expose to a look-book presentation.  Under the creative directors Takeshi Kosaka and Risa Matsushima, whose ascension within the brand is with or without Yohji Yamamoto's nod of approval -  conscious or other otherwise.  As they are both able to maintain Y's safe and configured designs, to which Yamamoto implanted as his stalwart signature brand, which has followed without much redirection, the expectations of a Ready-to -Wear collection that is accessible to the collector.

It isn't easy trying to suppress some of the critique one has towards the current fashion industry at the moment, which, like most production based industries have manifested fervently in a pre-bubble (and maybe post bubble) world of excess, which has allowed widespread plagiarism and re-copying of designs almost down to the stitch work.  But, there has to be a critique, that fashion on a general scale, needs to either come undone slightly (no pun) and rethink aesthetics or implode back to creativity.  Rather than chase markets, which may not be there (or have already been sourced).  This will be a challenge for the newer designers, who, in a lot ways have ridden a postgraduate boom into a market that is saturated with fellow designers of fashion.  Whilst under the shadow of the fast fashion factories churning out copies of every year's season.   In this sense, it will be a daunting process to maintain a focus for the newer designers.  Certainly not for the faint of heart.

I feel Y's Spring 2019 collection, even though it was not intended to offer anymore than what it is, the draped linen styles, over sized fits and slight asymmetrical cuts.  With very minor tweaks introducing color to the array.  It could've been, if inclined to be, a shift away from what can be remade by a young designer in a pop-up shop somewhere or even a small brand with a permanent shop/brand (I have seen this) who are creating the exact same looks.   It almost seems Y's is duplicating itself and the stylization of Yamamoto's (and other Japanese designers) debut 37 years ago onto the Paris couture shows.  So, if these are the resonance of ghosts from the past in all of their restlessness.  I wonder if they should be gently put to rest, particularly when they've been plagiarized so intensely.  Is there a perpetuity as a recent article suggests of Yamamoto's legacy.  It is more of a darkness.  To what the Zen describe as the void, of nothingness, yet in this abyss, is a clarity of mind.  When creative markets, fashion or otherwise begin to expand without care, the purpose, beyond the material – becomes stale.   The black and white of dualism I respect, as it can, even though they are two, react as one.  For many, all they see is the split between worlds, a latent prejudice of the human condition (to which Yamamoto has explored in his collections and brands).  But beyond petty cultural disputes which lays a fear that both men and women have, that is life and its death simultaneously.  Black and white, used, particularly with Y's Spring 2019 collections, as set pieces combine the two – rather than revealing a gothic overture and this is where I feel the competing avant garde brands have missed the meaning of using dark and light as a rustic vision of clothing styles.  Is to understand that the two opposites are not colors.  They are the void.  Absorbing and reflecting at the same time  So, maybe with Yamamoto's brand or affiliation with his namesake.  Is a bemusement of what he devised over thirty years ago, is, rather than perpetual in its “revolution”, it is stuck in a re-loop.  Whirling around like ravenous phantoms.  The distress of not letting the past go.  Moving into the now.  It is, even in fashion, the only way to heal.