From the Chiasmus Archive: October 14, 2015. Yohji Yamamoto. Spring Fashion Week 2016 – Paris (A.Glass 2015)

(Photos from nymag.com.  All credit due.)

“Step by step walk the thousand-mile road.”  Miyamoto Musashi 宮本 武蔵

And then you become a master. Yohji Yamamoto, as a creator of design in fashion is just that, a master.    Since we have a bubble world of inundation of expectations and rushed thoughts of success and fame.  The majority of newer fashion design is a slurry of plagiarisms and failure.  Influences, inspiration should be just a slight touch not a brush-stoke.  They flush students out of the school, colleges without teaching them how to really think, create and discovery new concepts to redefine the valuations within the spectrum of reality – and in the end surpass the teacher, so the teacher can re-learn and apply to his/her own life.

Black, shades of black, draped beautifully, watch the light and it’s darkness as it casts shadows.  Whether artificial light or natural, what it does to a design, image, clothing is it reacts within the various illuminations of perception.  Yamamoto does this flawlessly, particularly with this collection.  Black is not a harsh formulation, but it should not just be left on it’s own.  From within the color range, it has to be controlled, but it is an incredible canvas and/or backdrop to bring out a design, to realize its evocation.

Paris Fashion week spring 2016 showed a homage to the 1980s avant garde Paris influence.  Vivienne Westwood with her collection this year did a 180 degree return back to her roots.  It’s didn’t shine for me.  Yamamoto, with this collection, brought back his and other Japanese design influences from that period in Paris fashion, in which the young Japanese fashion designers who made they way to study and create in Paris in the early 80s redefined haute couture.

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(A.Glass 2015)