Y-3. Fall 2025 - Paris Fashion Week

 

The dystopian, deconstructed, unpicked and dropped stitching, drapey, raw artisan styles have all but petered out Eight years ago, after a stalwart run with many of the smaller brands that have disappeared from the face of the Earth.  Yet, an Eighteen year run is not bad in all considering that the styles were as an upmarket alternative to punk, which were was deemed Avant-garde.   Devised by Japanese designers Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo who are solely credited for bringing the said looks to the runways of Japan and Paris in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  So, the stygian, Avant-garde styles of the last 47 years, is very much a Japanese affair, which owes less to goth and punk aesthetics, and more tro the retrofitted, old-as-new, science fiction concepts ala Blade Runner (1982), which in turn borrowed heavily from the visualizations of the mid 1970s French adult comic Métal Hurlant, of broken down dystopic cities and the styles we may adorn after the collapse.  

Fashion mirrors popular culture, with societal trends and events setting the mold.  And it is, paradoxically, our desires to homogenize our individualism, is where exclusivity via clothing holds a significance materialistically.  Yamamoto and Karakubo are now in their Eighties, so if you are curious on how the 2000 to 2018 revival of the 'black', raw looks evolved from, refer to Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons "Holes" and "Patchwork and X" collections of 1982 and 1983.

And you may ask; how does Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas collaboration Y-3 fit into this timeline?  As what could be deemed an unholy alliance between 40 years of raw, dark, artisan styles fused to 20 years of sportswear.  Well, Y-3 begun in 2003, and I started reviewing the collaboration over Ten years ago, so it very much falls into the heyday of the revival of the Avant-garde of the early 2000s.  With the commercialisation of 2000s designer goth styles would be an obvious business decision at the time, and it made sense that a conglomerative such as Adidas had aspirations to utilize one of the originators of the look, Yohji Yamamoto.  In turn, collaborate the Yamamoto brand name to the Three Stripe logo of Adidas, thus Y-3 was created.

Y-3's Fall 2025, Yamamoto has included further collaborative plays to the Adidas umbrella, including 1990s esque Japanese streetwear brand Neighborhood and Italian motorcycle leather/accessories label Dainese, which may be indicative that collaborations, via association to a conglomerate in some shape or form, is matter of survival for the smaller brands that well and truly could be struggling to survive in this cost inflated world.  

Yamamoto's x Adidas x Neighborhood x Danise collection held at the Pavillon Cambon in Paris, seen within its vast brutalist setting, Omnitopia presentation, offering a darker, sassy, militarist array with elements of postmodern fused with the Avant-garde.  And there no doubting the Japanese anime influences for the latest Y-3 array, more so the 1988 Manga adaptation of "Akira", refer to the neon Tokyo futurist bikie gang looks towards the end of the show.

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(A.Glass 2025)