My very raw and disorganized notes on Japanese Fashion Designers by Bonnie English. The writing in this book was just OK and there isn’t really much critical engagement, which is disappointing, but it’s still a really useful introductory overview of an area of fashion history many people are curious about. Reading André Leon Talley’s memoir The Chiffon Trenches has also helped me connect some dots on the state of the Western fashion market at the time and their contrasting ways of thinking about fashion.
YY: Yohji Yamamoto
IM: Issey Miyake
RK: Rei Kawakubo
CM: my interjections/thoughts
Notes
- YY and RK first going to Paris
- Yamamato (YY) and Kawakubo (RK) first showed at Paris → their look was dubbed ‘aesthetics of poverty’ - controversial notion objects aged with time and use was difficult for Westerners to appreciate, whereas Japanese enjoy this, see e.g. kintsugi, irregular/worn drinking vessels used in tea ceremony
- perishability - ragged edges, tears, knots, uneven hemlines - something Margiela (MM) also uses
- important concept in Japanese aesthetics (CM: consider In Praise of Shadows?)
- RK first made a kimono-inspired collection, but YY said: “Rei, we are not souvenir designers. Japanese designers bringing Japanese ideas to Paris is not comfortable to me. I don’t want to explain Japan to the world.“
- Yamamato (YY) and Kawakubo (RK) first showed at Paris → their look was dubbed ‘aesthetics of poverty’ - controversial notion objects aged with time and use was difficult for Westerners to appreciate, whereas Japanese enjoy this, see e.g. kintsugi, irregular/worn drinking vessels used in tea ceremony
- kimonos
- is ‘perfect vehicle for semantic analysis’ as outlined by [Roland Barthes] in his 1960 The Fashion System
- Paul Poiret and Vionnet both inspired by the loose-fitting, non-restrictive garment
- Miyake (IM)’s unconventional use of models
- his Beautiful Ladies (1995) collection used 6 models aged between 62 and 92
- photographer Yuriko Takagi collaborated with IM - took his clothes to Indian rural villages and photographed people wearing them. questions of commenting on the artificiality of the runway vs. exploiting the poor to advertise expensive designer clothing
- 1995 Octogenarian clothing - women in their 80s - communicates clothes as both timeless and ageless
- IM and textile experimentation
- Starbust series - old clothes were sandwiched between foil sheets of metallic paper, heatpressed, and sealed between the thin membranes → foil cracks and stretches, revealing parts of metallic-streaked old fabric below
- liked synthetics because they could be heat-treated, heat-setting offers more textural possibilities
- IM’s pleats
- in debt to Spanish designer Fortuny, master of the ‘poetic pleat’, early 20th-century, revived a Grecian pleating system as seen in his Delphos garments from the 1910s - inspired many designers in the 1920s and 30s
- IM Colombe dress - snap fasters made a single panel of cloth into a draped dress, proving you don’t need to sew anything to make a dress - fasteners can be functional and decorative
- inspired by studying dancers, sent 200-300 garments to dancers for performing in The Last Detail → inspired his Pleats, Please range → led him to use dancers instead of professional models
- ‘Minaret’ pleated dress with 7 hoops
- pleatsplease.com - details research and development of his products, including storyboard of how Pleats, Please was made. very unusual approach to marketing, website has image of vibrant, animated dancing figures
- IM’s A Piece of Cloth concept
- It is important people participate in making their own clothing.
- doesn’t need machine-sewn seams
- IM design inspirations
- paper
- inspired to produce a collection of paper dresses ← mulberry fibers were used to make handmade papers, which was used to line clothing for warmth
- 1989 Cicada Pleats garment - inspired by metamorphosis, insects’ outer skin and concept of clothing as a ‘second skin', uses semi-transparent paper
- in art: Brancusci, Giacometti
- fashion: Balenciaga and especially Vionnet, who minimized cutting and body fitting, rarely used patterned fabrics or embroidery, focused on manipulating fabric itself
- paper
- Japanese design industry
- IM: The great thing about it is we don’t do licensing, aren’t controlled by someone else. We own our own companies.
- YY’s inspirations
- In Wim Wenders’ film Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989): “When I was young, I used to wish I could draw time. I liked used clothes, things that are old and worn.”
- inspired by old French war movies with actresses in army uniforms - “I found that so sexy. The body is protected. And covered. In a very hard way. And so when you are forced to ask yourself ‘what’s inside?’ When you have no freedom, your sexuality becomes stronger.”
- other YY ideas
- Homage to Dior (1997) - purposely badly-fit garments, uneven hems, see-through skirts, and scissor-cut edges - deconstructed homage to Dior while House of Dior was looking for a new head designer
- CM: note that said head designer was John Galliano, after a truly heroic effort to save his career and get him a job, courtesy of Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley
- memoir Talking to Myself (2002) - book binding exposes stitching of the spine, threads of the binding are tangled
- Homage to Dior (1997) - purposely badly-fit garments, uneven hems, see-through skirts, and scissor-cut edges - deconstructed homage to Dior while House of Dior was looking for a new head designer
- RK’s ideas
- gender-neutral - “Fashion design is not about revealing or accentuating the shape of a woman’s body, its purpose is to allow a person to be what they are.”
- influenced by the kimono - space between the fabric and the body that is most important (CM: Barthes has also noted this)
- loom-distressed weaves in textiles by altering the loom
- made sweaters with holes and dropped stitches by tampering with the looms and introduce randomness, e.g. loosening screws in the looms
- RK: fashion is social, personal, individual - a way to express your personality. Active participation whereas art is passive
- RK’s staging choices
- Cindy Sherman photographed her clothes on disjointed mannequins and bizarre characters, forcing the clothing itself into the background - masquerade settings, performance art, rather than conventional fashion photography
- CM: I did not know RK worked with her on Untitled Film Stills?!
- published the bi-annual magazine Six (1998), featuring photographic essays and images
- believes shop interiors, ads, graphic design are all part of the vision
- used non-professional models, art world personalities, and film celebrities, something very new at the time - Anna Wintour caught onto this and popularized using celebrities over models
- she co-designs her retail outlets - white, minimal interiors, cracked concrete floors, fittings made of industrial racks and shelves, warehouse tables for displaying goods and old refrigerators for storage
- Cindy Sherman photographed her clothes on disjointed mannequins and bizarre characters, forcing the clothing itself into the background - masquerade settings, performance art, rather than conventional fashion photography
- fashion as a demarcation of class in Japan
- farmers, artisans, and merchants weren’t allowed to wear fine hitta kanoto, gold embroidery, stenciling, silk, or red or purple dyes
- these dyes were extremely expensive to produce, so its use was limited not only to keep the merchant class in its place, but regulate the economy by discouraging overspending - but this meant the dye was even more sought after
- CM: learned recently that in the 1500s-ish, black clothes were a sign of wealth in Spain/Portugal because the dye was made from oak apples, very expensive to produce
- Martin Margiela’s “anti-fashion tactics”
- enigmatic numbering system
- staging choices
- staged in old, poor places in Paris, often mainly inhabited by brown/black people; empty Metro shafts; deserted parking lots; abandoned railway stations
- non-professional models, often wear strips across their eyes or swath their heads in veils to remain anonymous
- 1994 collection based on what Barbie’s wardrobe would look like if blown up to life size
- Viktor & Rolf
- ‘V & R are on Strike’ - art installation with only press clippings about themselves - idea that fashion shows are mostly about media hype for the designer, not the clothing itself
- similarly, Helmut Lang sent CD-ROMS and videos of his collections to editors in 1998 instead of holding runway shows
- in 2001, he presented his spring 2001 collection on the Internet instead of flying to Paris - believed this made it more accessible
- he also did a Jenny Holzer collab…
- Chalayan’s Between collection (1998) portrayed women in Muslim body coverings - models removed more and more clothing until only their faces were covered
References I want to read
- Lipovetsky - the Empire of Fashion (1994)
- ‘People Dress So Badly Nowadays’ - Andrew Hill
- ‘Should We Reproduce the Beauty of Decay?’ - Heide Skowranek
- ‘Liberation from the Toilet’ - Tanaka Mitsu