There was no music to accompany the models as the Yohji Yamamoto show began. With only the sound of their feet gliding down the raised wooden runway and the camera shutters clicking, the dim hush allowed for reflection on how different the Yohji experience is from the rest of fashion—with no paid-to-be-there celebrities and no paparazzi throngs. Not that Yamamoto, who is now 80 and who has been putting on runway shows for over 40 years, was lacking for notable attendees. Diana Widmaier Picasso and Klaus Biesenbach sat in the front row, near the French artist Orlan, the musician Warren Ellis (who walked the designer’s men’s runway a month ago), and the milliner Stephen Jones.
To start, the collection was all black. The details disappear against the background in these images, but there was nothing flat about Yamamoto’s designs. The coats, dresses, and suits were all embellished with collapsing squares of various kinds, like walking cubist sculptures. Widmaer Picasso’s grandfather, in his cubist period, depicted his subjects from many different perspectives, putting them in deeper, richer, and more complicated context. Yamamoto was up to something related here. Certainly, the woman who wears one of these pieces on the street will get a double-take.
Moving along, he played with the similar geometric shapes and volumes in mismatched red and black plaids, or with pinstripes, checks, and tweeds that had a substantial hand-hewn look. In at least one case, one of the larger squares came with a zipper for stowing potential necessities, but function seemed not the point of these experiments. Utility is not what drives Yamamoto as a designer; if his pieces weave themselves into their wearer’s lives it’s for other more esoteric and emotional reasons.
Backstage Yamamoto was his usual blend of attentiveness and elusiveness, nodding his head at questions, but providing only short answers. Was he referencing cubism? “Yes.” Looking at Picasso? Actually, “Braque.”
To conclude, he sent out a group of five muted gray suits and coats. From the front, these looked like a rejection of the imaginative, experimental constructions that came before, with only pyramidal shoulders adding visual interest. Au contraire. Unfortunately for those witnessing the show only on screen, the front of those looks tells just half of the story. As the models made their way back down the runway, they paused to pose and show off the lavish bustles—more organic than Braque’s cubist geometries—that decorated their backsides.
As it happens, at the Pompidou, there is a black coat dress with a red bustle from a 1989 Yamamoto collection on display in Laurence Benaim’s affecting “La traverse des apparences” exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Which brings it back to Stephen Jones. As he waited to say his hello to Yamamoto, the famous hatmaker remarked: “It’s so interesting to see all those things other people have taken over the years from him, but actually see him doing them.” Including many contemporary designers today. “It just looks so fresh.”
