Y-3. Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week.

(Image/video:  Y-3 2025.  Stream of Spring 2025 Paris show starts at 13.50 mins)

Yohji Yamamoto turns 81 this coming October, with Four decades of his signature labels under his belt, the aging master designer Twenty years ago, began a collaboration with the sportswear giant Adidas to formulate Yamamomo's Avant-garde imprint onto the Adidas three stripes.  And it has been over Ten years since I first starting writing reviews covering Y-3 shows, and in my opinion, there has been at times, a tenuous relationship with Adidas in defining the Y-3 brand.  And there is no doubting that Y-3 is a youth or so called young adult brand, and within the dynamics of time, the 20 somethings in 2002 when Y-3 was first launched, are now 40 plus year olds.  I bought a Y-3 jacket in 2013, over Ten years later, I wore the jacket till it fell apart, the back story can be read with my Y-3 Fall 2023 review.

The Avant-garde raw, tailored and unstructured looks petered out in 2018, when the majority of the smaller brands evolving about the same time as Y-3's first collection in 2002, simply could not compete or remain financially viable in an expansive world of conglomerate fashion.  That was the reality then, and the reality now.  To which many budding designers have their buy-me-out price tags on request, however, the que for any collaborative deals with the brand giants like Adidas and Puma, are now so relegated, you would fall back into the realms of luck.  Therefore, any endeavors of ambition of being bought out as a fashion creative, may indeed heed to a pointless dream.

Of course Yamamoto is no up and coming designer, and the association with Adidas works due to Yamamoto's multi-dynamic impression of his Tokyo esque dystopian futures, akin to an Japanese manga comic, with aesthetics that could be seen as a sleeker version of Yamamoto's own signature brand including his Ready-to-Wear Y's collections.  Linen and fine wools have been replaced with polyamide, nylon taffeta, gortex and cotton's.  The postmodern deconstructive looks, replaced with the modernized and structured, but nevertheless balanced between a conglomerative utopia, and dystopic decline.   Can both work within the same space, as an ageless paradigm?

Probably not, and the weight of time bears down on all.  To keep Y-3 fresh and consistent within in its youthful relevance.  The subtle stylizations of Yamamoto's mastery with Y-3 could be overlooked, yet with the 2025 Spring collection it holds a familiar cue to Yamamoto's legacy.  The styles on show reflect a mature sophistication, less futuristic and young, and more aligned with Yamamoto's sombre timeline of the world weary and worn torn collection from his own signature label, which was predominate on the Paris runaways and lookbooks after the 2020 pandemic.  

While the Adidas PR teams apparently crammed in as many 20 something 'celebrities' they could muster for the Y-3 Spring  runway show in Paris, the latest array is no youthful celebration.  Of late, Yamamoto has been deliberately slowing down his model's runway walks, whilst inserting gray haired reflections of youth, that being older models walking side by side for his signature label.   And Y-3 appears to have not to been spared by Yamamoto's aging process.  Thus, the Y-3 paradigm has been replaced by a paradox.  To which the master designer has left an open imprint for the wearer.  If one was so inclined to discern.

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(A.Glass 2024)