Memoire de la Mode: Yohji Yamamoto by François Baudot
Memoire de la Mode: Yohji Yamamoto book written by the legendary fashion journalist and author François Baudot. Edition published in English in 2005 by ASSOULINE. Read about the history and groundbreaking work of one of the Japanese Avant-Garde’s founding fathers. Features colored and b/w pictures as well as text.
Original price was: 300,00 kr..225,00 kr.Current price is: 225,00 kr.. incl. VAT
In stock
Description
Memoire de la Mode: Yohji Yamamoto book written by the legendary fashion journalist and author François Baudot. Edition published in English in 2005 by ASSOULINE. Read about the history and groundbreaking work of one of the Japanese Avant-Garde’s founding fathers. Features colored and b/w pictures as well as text.
Condition: All pages are intact. The cover has a few small stains, and signs of usage but is overall in great condition.
Country of publication: USA
“People wear my clothes to make a statement.”
When Yohji Yamamoto’s first collection was shown in Paris in 1981 – the same year as Rei Kawakubo debuted at the European fashion scene – he was unknown to the world. A few years before, he had worked for his mother, who was a dressmaker. The day after the show in Paris, Libération had the headline “French fashion has found its masters – The Japanese”. From that day on, Yamamoto and Kawakubo were famous. They had managed to break all the rules of fashion design and had melted the traditional silhouettes of Pret-a-porter. Similar to Kawakubo, Yamamoto sought to erase the form and its boundaries, only Yamamotos garments often appeared to be nothing more than mere layers of pitch-black cloth, instead of actual clothes. His looks seemed almost like enigmatic ghosts, that didn’t represent any specific period of time or looked like any recognizable figure. Yamamoto’s next target in his rage against the fashion refinement was the suit. The suit was the perfect statue of a rather conservative approach to fashion pret-a-porter, and furthermore, the suit is the most dominant clothing dress of human history. Once again Yamamoto sought to dissolve the usual shapes, fabrics, and cultural meaning of the suit. His take on the suit is a perfect artifact of the Yohji Yamamoto style, where every element of time and structure is dismantled and revised. With narrow shoulders and lapels, along with the said distressed silhouette that appears to be nothing but a shadow, Yamamoto challenged the conformity and the predetermined rules of the suit.
According to himself, Yamamoto’s work isn’t motivated by some abstract concept or idea as you could expect from a rather avant-garde and provocative designer. He, instead, describes it as an ode to the craft (perhaps rooted in his youth working for his mother in Japan) and the human hands cutting and sewing the garments. Yohji Yamamoto’s work is the ghost of all the unessescary glamour and attraction of fashion and reimagines the fundamental elements of wear.