The Yohji Resistance

From: Godfrey Deeny

1. Karate Kid Yamamoto likes a hat Illustration: Alexandra Compain Tissier

2. 
   March was a great month for Yohji Yamamoto, who staged a mega memorable runway show in Paris which he based on flower power and young people's anger. Then he starred on not one but three major exhibitions in London, and happily opened a new Y-3 flagship store on Conduit Street in the UK capital.
   Socialite babe Mary Charteris, actor Rupert Everett, beauty Tallulah Harlech and soccer great Zinedine Zidane all joined Yohji for the opening of his latest outpost of Y-3, the long-term joint venture with adidas that has become the much-lauded template of all fashion/sport partnerships. While the boutique’s interior has hard modernist materials and an ultra-clean aesthetic, in synch with the striped-back street style brand DNA, Yamamoto, of course, remains fashion’s most poetic designer. The juxtaposition merely heightens the Japanese creator’s unique ability to straddle several worlds, alternating from the energetically punchy to the poetically poised. Elsewhere in the city, the Victoria & Albert Museum is staging a retrospective - a series of installations and of more than 60 of his most ground-breaking designs.

3. A Yamamoto design at the V&A Foto: Ronald Stoops

4. Further east, the Wapping Project presents Making Waves, an installation of a single, and humungous, Yamamoto white silk wedding dress complete with a bizarre crinoline in bamboo. While at Wapping Bankside, one can enjoy Yohji’s Women, where seven major league photographers chronicle Yamamoto, right back to 1981 when he first showed on a Paris catwalk. Nick Knight, Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Peter Lindbergh and Paolo Roversi are among the contributors. Let's not forget that Yamamoto in his famous collaborations with art directors Peter Saville and Marc Ascoli was one of the first designers to employ cutting-edge talent liek David Sims and Craig McDean.

5. A Yamamoto campaign image by Craig McDean, art directed by Marc Ascoli Foto: Markus Ebner

6. Two years ago, Yamamoto went into Chapter 11 in Japan, brutally chopped down by the diabolically negative scissors of the global downturn and some naïve over-expansion and funding of his daughter's label Limi Feu. Now he’s back on a lyrical roll, especially on the catwalk, where his French grande damsel meets Clash City Rocker groupie babe was a tour de force of rebel romanticism from a 68-year-old grandfather who just seems to keep getting younger. And his name has even been tossed into the Dior successor game by WWD's Bridget Foley who remembers his wonderful series of shows in the 90's when he showed his Yves Saint Laurent and Dior-inspired collections.