Y-3. Spring 2026 - Paris Fashion Week

(Images: Y-3. 2025)

My first Y-3 fashion review was the Spring 2014 showing at New York Fashion Week 12 years ago, in midtown Manhattan, in a gallery styled factory space, with a slew of very young celebrities attending at the time, with the likes of professional snowboarder Helen Schettini, now a mother, Justin Bieber, before the tattoos and controversy, and now a father.   And the 20 something models that walked the show are now in the mid 30s, all within the context of the Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto collaboration, which as I have noted over the last decade, holds, albeit subtle and slightly tenuous degree, a kind of push and pull with the Adidas 'Three Stripe' logo and Yamamoto signature brand name, overlaid by his avant-garde drapey Japanese styles.  Which of course had morphed from his imprint on the fashion world in 1977, when he debuted his runway show in Tokyo, Japan, thereafter descended on Paris with his partner at the time Rei Kawakubo (of Comme des Garçons fame). Both of them essentially redefining 1960s and 1970s modernism, and inscribing onto the runways those black, dystopian anime conceptual, avant-garde styles that we know and love today.

Yamamoto turns 82 this year and continues on with the Paris Fashion Weeks as he has done over the last 40 years, with his signature label, and also the Y's which is exclusively a women's collection, with Y-3 being Yamamoto's early 2000s street/sports goth wear, utility and mountaineering (a trend that came and went in 2017, 2018) fusion.  Settling it back to his more basic draped looks, whilst maintaining the avant-garde sneakers styles, and there is no doubt Y-3 is aimed at a younger market, and a new generation of back dated 20 year olds.  And in a paradoxical way, whilst we are all aging, Yamamoto has matured and added a masterful fixture to the Y-3 brand, maybe even slowing it down within the conglomerate world of chasing new markets.

For the latest Y-3 ensemble, it was held at the Palais Brongniart convention centre, built by Napoleon in the early 19th Century, and once the Paris Stock Exchange,  Yamamoto, this time, has compressed and downsized his showing for his Y-3 Spring 2026 collection, no flashy runway, or theatrical imprint to rouse the youth, rather it was the Kianí Del Valle dance group, adporened in Y-3's draped, dark and flowing styles, rhythmically dancing within, as mentioned, a relatively confined space.  And Yamamoto, for the first time since the 2002 collaboration with Adidas, has just made Y-3 a minimalist projection, even if is a brief visual experiment, seen not only with the setting, but also the clothing.    From fine textured Rayon, drapey cottons, stylized and flowing, with its dark/light dichotomy and mysterious overture.  Whilst mostly being devoid of commercial symbolism, sans the Y-3 logo, which holds an aesthetical edge over the Adidas 'stripes', for the many who can afford the clothes.  Yamamoto latest array reflects a stunning minimalism, not yet seen with Y-3.  Until now.

With each dancer dramatising their movements under a dimmed interior, whilst dancing on blackened sand, choreographed by Puerto Rican born and now based Berlin dancer Kianí Del Valle.  The artistic concept felt, as disciplined and fluid movements do, offering a spiritually uplifting experience, even if it is to assist in selling a brand name, but subtly reflecting, that glitz and fame doesn't last.  

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(A.Glass 2025)