THE POET OF BLACK
As Y-3 celebrates its 10th anniversary, Ng Yi Lian gains clarity about the brand’s aesthetic and creativity from the man himself—Yohji Yamamoto
Yohji Yamamoto on how he sets his own standards on fashion
Mention Yohji Yamamoto and, often, images of his creations in dark, voluminous and radic radical shapes come to mind. Whether for his epon eponymous label that he has been showing in Pa Paris from the beginning, in March 1981, or fo for Y-3, a creative collaboration between him a and Adidas, which is entering its second decade, Yamamoto’s fashion aesthetic has been nothing but consistent.
Yamamoto, along with his then-girlfriend Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, starte started off by presenting clothes that didn’t make sense to the fashion world then of body body-hugging dresses and padded shoulders. Thei Their alternative style of misshapen pieces that completely covered the models’ bodies were considered unflattering. The fashion indus industry didn’t understand the intellectual esthetic behind the Japanese designers’ creations and they went on to get labelled as ““holocaust chic.”
Despite the slew of criticism that plagued him for seasons after his Parisian debuts wher where his collections were also described as “a sn snobbism of rags that presents the future in a bad way,” “suicidal” and “the Japanese offen offensive,” Yamamoto stayed true to his design philosophy. And just like believers attract other believers, Yamamoto gained his very own fan following. Subsequently, in 1982, two newly launched magazines, Face and i-D lapped up the radicalism in both Yamamoto’s and Kawakubo’s designs and gradually, people started to understand their avant-garde and paradigm-breaking aesthetic.
Twenty years later, while wanting to feature Adidas sneakers in his show as a nod to the pervasive presence of the three-striped footwear on the streets of Japan, Yamamoto unwittingly got into a serious discussion with the German sportswear brand. And that, spelt the beginning of Y-3.
Athleticism wasn’t an alien concept to Yamamoto. In the late ’80s, he took up karate and even earned his black belt. It seems that this aspect of Yamamoto’s life also had a spill over into his fashion career—one of his runway shows concluded with a martial arts demonstration where he appeared to karatechop a model.
With Y-3, Yamamoto has combined two disparate worlds that, before his time, hardly existed together—fashion and sports.
“I think fashion helps us to get rid of our inferiority complex and sports allow us to do it in a practical manner”—Yohji Yamamoto
Your initial intention was to collaborate with Adidas for your own collection. But it has spun off into its own label. So was the beginning of Y-3 kind of a pleasant accident for you?
In Japan you see the triple stripes everywhere, on trains and on the streets… High school kids and college students all wear Adidas. It was more a surprise than anything else. It was more like, “How can I make my creative life without this?” That’s why I asked my assistant to call Adidas. I was sure that they would refuse and was pleasantly surprised when they said “yes.”
Y-3 was one of the original collaborations between sportswear and high fashion. And you’ve personally dabbled in other creative endeavours, with music, for example. Do you think such collaborations and extensions are important?
The collaboration with Adidas is not only important in my creative experience: it gave life to something entirely new. It’s like a child born of two parents with two incredibly different sets of DNAs. The result is remarkably interesting. It has enriched my life. There were many meetings to develop the collection together. It was an exchange between different cultures and different ideas.
How do you think your karate background enables you to design Y-3?
I think fashion helps us to get rid of our inferiority complex and sports allow us to do it in a practical manner. We try to find something purposeful in the body. But where are we headed with this tiny space called body? I have been thinking about this contradiction and I always want to see if sports can be made elegant.
You place high importance on fabrications and cuts. For your own line, your fabrics are specially made in Kyoto. What is the reason for this?
In the beginning we just wanted to borrow some three-striped trainers from Adidas for my fall/winter 2001 show. Then we started discussing with their designers how sportswear for the future would look, and decided that we would need high-tech fabrics, bright colours and fashionable silhouettes. In short, everything the full-price prêt-a-porter collections had. And that is how Y-3 came about. More things were added, accessories, hats, bicycles, footballs and more. The original concept of looking and feeling good, however, at the same time has not changed.
How is that translated into Y-3?
Y-3 brings high-end fashion to the forefront of modern street style and hopefully, lets customers look chic and cool. The sports world and its technology seek necessity, practicality or functionality, attempting to reduce excess, while fashion is seeking the opposite. With Y-3, we gave a view to the future [of how sportswear can exist in a fashion context].
What has been your proudest Y-3 moment?
Making sportswear elegant and chic.
Both the Germans and the Japanese have a certain stringency when it comes to aesthetics and they are very specific in their approach to design. What similarities do you find between your team and Adidas’?
Adidas and I—we are just like each other: Japanese and German people are intelligent sportsmen. Our working rhythm is the same. Based on this common characteristic, we have mutual respect; there is nothing that cannot be solved. I always like to have an ironic take on logos in the Y-3 collection. Y-3 naturally develops our crew the way children develop and grow. It’s an exchange between different cultures, different ideas and most of all, it is teamwork.
Is there a next creative collaboration on the cards? If so, what would it be based on?
[I don’t know, as] collaborations with artists tend to fall into a kind of mannerism, [especially] when we continue doing such projects with a particular artist.