Yohji Yamamoto. women's Fall 2025 - Paris Fashion Week.

I am deuteranopia colour blind, so I cannot distinguish between purple and blue with other colours, however colorblind people can see details very well, so when purple is set against black, the light absorbing base, it brings out the purple, and many other details that Yohji Yamamoto for his Fall 2025 collection can muster, including for his latest collection the use of purple known as 'murasaki' (紫) in Japan.  And who could mistake the impact that Yamamoto had on the Fashion industry after 47 years, when he and partner at the time, the iconic Rei Kawakubo descended on Paris from Japan in the early 1980s and introduced black as a redefined, drapey, linen and fine wool affair, which decades later represented on the runways of Paris, the new Avant-garde.  To which the Fashion press at the time of Kawakubo and Yamamoto's 1981 debut collection, titled their groundbreaking styles in a derogatory manner as "Hiroshima Chic", yet after four decades later the 81 year old Yamamoto is still standing, and maintaining those very same signature styles.

Yamamoto's latest array was held at the Hotel de ville de Paris, in his slowed down runway showing, with his trademark soundtrack of Japanese jazz fusion, lyrically offering a glimpse into the aging designer's creative thoughts of nostalgia and the relentlessness of time. To which Yamamoto referenced his age to the media in attendance, and that he is rushing against time. Yet his latest collection is far from being rushed, it is at what you expect with from Yamamoto who has been showing his collections for Paris Fashion Week since 1981. And it should be said, that the master doesn't master time, but rather, embodies time. To which Yamamoto may be referring to when he says he is, 'rushing against time'.

Yamamoto over his illustrious career, has experimented with the regimented military look, albeit within his recut and asymmetrical layering, and for his Fall 2025 showing he has reinstated those wartorn combatant styles to his women's collection. With heavy wool and leather insulated looks, and rectangular chain mail tops. Drapey long skirts, boots, masks and encompassing ankle length jackets, the collection offers an unyielding display of toughness, defiance and aggression. Is this Yamamoto's protest song? As he has always been admiring of youthful exuberance, however the youth have so far been unable to orchestrate a tangible counterculture after decades of middle class expectations. And we are all very close to our 11th hour, with Fascism on the rise, and global turmoil increasing by the day. Yamamoto's latest collection could be that aesthetical wakeup call, that the time for action is nigh.

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(A.Glass 2025)