Yohji Yamamoto. Men's Fall 2020 - Paris Fashion Week

Images from the designer and the public domain. Credited to the photographer/company where applicable: Gorunway.com)

Yohji Yamamoto's personality maybe complex, which has been on many occasions reflected as a designer, who has been steadily designing clothes for the last forty years, with a back log that is so impressive and extensive.  Even with his notable aesthetics Yamamoto keeps an ambiguity and at times paradoxical aspect to his stature.  A humility from the master designer has always been ensured, yet there is the avant-garde Dadaist attribute that resurfaces from time to time.  Interestingly, I have just completed the first part of a retrospection article of the last of the modern day Zen poets Shinkichi Takahasi, who was, in his younger days, influenced by Dadaism.  The 1920s Anti-Art movement, to which Yamamoto for this latest collection maintains his anti-fashion decree.  I feel, more so with Japanese creatives that when they draw on European and Western concepts of artistic expression, it ends up clashing, in a relevant and important way, with their Eastern perspectives of visualizing space and time.  In my opinion, Yamamoto has very much aligned himself in fusing those artistic dualities.  

Although there is a notable weariness creeping into Yamamoto's aesthetic idealisms, more so how he currently perceives fashion as an industry.  Titling his men's Fall 2020 collection as “Partisan” Yamamoto is not shy in militarizing the costume apparel of his men's collections, which he has done many times before with previous seasons.  With his latest men's array, he has returned to the existential uniform styles, that over Yamamoto's lustrous career as a fashion designer, he has excelled.  The drapey, unstructured, rugged and multi layered looks, which work so well on the male form.  Portrayed via some of the more mature looking male models, as tough and resilient characters moving from past to present.  But, maybe this tiredness that Yamamoto feels is evident of the times we are all living in.  An exhaustion of failed expectations that is overtaking the ambitions of grandeur, the entrepreneurial illusion, which is always reflective of an all too real boulevard that is of those broken dreams.  In his Japanese East/West sentiment, to which he was quoted in press of his latest collection, that he is becoming “dangerous...” in his “...thoughts”, at the “world...”, his “….home country” and also of “himself" more so his dissatisfaction with the “fashion world” that he sees around him.  This could be possibly indicative of man who has designed clothing, in its masterful precision, to be of a rebellious nature, yet, if we are analytical of Yamamoto's thoughts, in his creative mannerism.  Looking at culture as a template that is presented before us.  There is no counter-culture.

Yet, Yamamoto's words expressed in lieu of his Fall 2020 collection, despite its cryptic mentation are overshadowed by the styles presented.  Beautifully textured plaid, fine wools, trench coats and blazers.  Jump suits and also seen are hanging jewelery accessories.  Asymmetrical cuts and as mentioned, layered into its masculine statements.  It is certainly a tough looking collection, with berets, hats and stylized beanies, the overall ensembles has been fitted in such a masterful direction by Yamamoto.  He maybe weary, but his experience and mastery is unbridled.