The Japanese Fashion - Essay Example

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF YOHJI YAMAMOTO AND ISSEY MIYAKE ON THE INTERNATIONAL FASHION CATWALKS IN THE NINETIES Japanese Fashion designers are always regarded in the International world of fashion as being very innovative, creative and forward Sudjic (2000). The Japanese Fashion designs have crossed beyond the borders and graced catwalks from New York to London, Milan to Paris. The Japanese fashion designers have greatly succeeded since they always give in to the needs of the public for individuality. Textile manufacturing has got a long history of sparking technological and social changes. The Japanese fashion designers have produced the most innovative and unique fashion styles because the idea of self expression has been throughout the years, been their battle cry. In addition, clothes made by the Japanese designers posses a basic cut which ensures that the freedom of the wearer is added to the personality of the outfits. The Japanese designers have for a long time been on the world stage of fashion cat walks and this is attributed to their impressive history and work. For a designer to remain on the international fashion catwalk, then he or she must maintain the relevance to this dynamic world of fashion Sparke (2007). Miyake and Yamamoto are Paris based Japanese designers who had the most polyvalent shows through the cat walks at the Palais de Tokyo. The catwalks were a world colorful mix of patchworks, prints, and white pleated series of gowns, patterned playsuits and safari outfits which came in camel tones. Light and fine fabrics worn in layers created a very beautiful contrast to the sophisticated but messy overlapping stripes and squares prints. Over the past thirty years, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto have each left very indelible and incredible impressions as far as international fashion are concerned Koren (2004). Issey Miyake stunned the world in the nineties with his Autumn/winter collections which were both functional and futuristic. He earned the name of “cloth sculpture” because of his ability to turn a garment from a single piece of fabric. In the nineties, the Miyake brands extended to the home furnishings, luggage and even bicycles. Yamamoto on the other side is known for his revolution of the avant garde clothing which he unveiled through a nice collection of women’s elegant fashions which were based on men’s clothing Phoenix Art Museum (2003). Yohji Yamamoto is known as the Founder of the Japanese Fashion House which is lauded for the Y’s label which is Yohji Yamamoto’s signature. The designer is known popularly for his complicated cuts, oversized silhouettes and innovative draping which clearly suggested abstract sculpture. Yamamoto relied on a somber color palette which was mostly dominated by black colour. Yamamoto was at first startled but later delighted with his fashion designs which had austere looks. The Yamamoto clothing is usually characterized by its use of unironed, washed and loose uncluttered forms with dark colours. The 1995 launching of the first Yohji + Noir clothing was largely black and had splashes of bright colours. Yamamoto consistently challenged the existing conventions by proving that black was beautiful in the fashion building career. Yamamoto had a craftsman’s sense of materials since he started each and every collection of the fabric and then left the collections to take their shapes. At most times, people termed his collections as being anti-fashion because they deconstructed but Yamamoto insisted that the aim of his clothes was to evoke emotional responses which will make people to be linked with them on a daily basis. Yohji Yamamoto was born in Tokyo, Japan and started his Company in 1972. His first collection was produced in Tokyo in 1976. This has an edge over any other designer. Yamamoto constantly and clearly explores the relationship between the feminine and masculine. He makes the clothes for women with an intellectual and artistic bent Sudjic (2000). Yohji Yamamoto has an approach which is philosophical to fashion and he knows that the secret behind the fashion is not just covering the body but creation of an interaction between the body, the person wearing the designs and the essential spirit of the fashion designer. Yamamoto explored new ways of dressing through synthesizing of the western clothing and the indigenous clothing of Japan. Yamamoto employs methods of draping, wrapping the body, and layering and swathed garments and often refuses to accept ideas about the female sexual display Montagu (2004). Yamamoto does not refer to the Western fashion but instead, he refers to a fixed form of Japanese clothing which have been developed and refined over many years. His anti-directional and anti-fashion garments ignore the current Western developments of in turn influences the western designers. To Yamamoto, beauty is more indefinable and this is expressed vividly in the texture of the materials that he uses rather than applied decoration. Yamamoto is also interested in the development of new materials just like other Japanese designers. Idiosyncratic is Yamamoto’s source of material which is obtained from a large library where he draws on for inspiration. He consistently refers to a book in which there is a collection of photographs by August Sander. August Sander is a photographer who is based in Cologne and he always took photographs of representative forms in the daily clothes that sharply reflected their lives. Yamamoto’s inspiration also comes from utilitarian outfits like the protective garments which were worn by women in the 1940’s Fraser (2007). Yamamoto is very uncomprising to the Western eyes and he instead investigates the Japanese traditional conviction in beauty as being not naturally given but instead expressed through the manipulation and creation of possibilities of the materials and colours of the garments. His clothing construction is usually described in the round rather than in the vertical, thus his construction is viewed not from the neck down as it is the in the case of the Western fashion but instead in a rectilinear and 2 dimensional approach. This approach explores the visual appeal of the asymmetry and the notion of the picturesque portrays a very crucial part in the Japanese philosophy of design in which the irregular forms are hailed for their lack of artifice and therefore their closeness to nature Montagu (2004). The garments of Yamamoto often have very unique pockets, flaps, lopsided collars and hems, always set off when the body is in motion and the labels inside the garments are inscribed with an epithet which reads, “There is nothing which is so boring as having a near and tidy look” Sparke (2007). Although the costume history is nowadays rife with sculptural manipulations of bodies, the human symmetry nature armature was rarely questioned. Yohji Yamamoto addressed the body as only a single part of the whole integral garment and therefore used asymmetry to be the core design concepts in the creation of garments which are virtually stand alone. This meant that the alternative forms depended on it but were not defined by the body. Issey Miyake was dubbed to be the “Picasso of fashion” but he rarely wanted to be called as an artist. His first collections were shown on the catwalks in 1973 in Paris, France. Issey Miyake has inspired many design students and a generation of designers as well. He has challenged the role world, the shape of fashion and rejuvenated the modern and sophisticated methods of clothing production. Issey Miyake was well known for his integration of technology, deign, engineering and fashion. To Miyake, it was naturally impossible for one to discuss fashion without the realm of clothing and that it was also impossible to think about fashion solely based on clothing. Miyake clearly used the inversion of the creator-consumer relationship in which a reconsideration of engineering and technology in fashion design became sop famous. The consumer was the creator while Miyake’s boutique became his workshop. Miyake is viewed up to today as the Godfather of the Japanese fashions since he is known for his ground breaking designs. Miyake spent decades trying to challenge the European traditions and conventional shapes of high fashion. It was not until 1993 that Miyake demonstrated a very special interest in the intersection of technology and fashion through the launch of his Pleats Please line. The Pleats Please line was a technique which utilized a very special heat method to infuse some simple and colorful fabrics with texture and shape resulting into light, defined and highly constructed free flowing clothing. Miyake’s mission for function and beauty in innovative forms was well reflected through his polyester clothing which required minimal sewing. Issey Miyake showed nearly 100 collections and won awards for almost every fashion that existed. Miyake was long admired for his innovation in boiling and melting the fabrics. He was the one responsible for the invention of the science of wrinkling and he perfected this art to the surprise of many people. Miyake’s interest was in having a design lab and not a designer label. He is known for having invented a single banner which had embedded fabrics with 23 dresses which were worn by 23 models. The 23 dresses worn by the 23 models were a preview of the grand finale for the A-POC (A piece of Cloth). A-POC referred to the fashion label and the process of manufacturing behind it. The process of manufacturing broke the fundamental laws of fashion physics of cutting and sewing. In normal circumstances, clothes are normally made by weaving threads or yarns into fabrics which were then snipped and stitched to create a dress. The A-POC method contrary to this method required no sewing at all. Instead, the thread went into the loom then the dress came out. In particular, the finished skirt, shirt, or pants came out from a flattened tube and therefore, they only needed to be cut along the faint outlines which were already knit or woven into the fabric. The A-POC method ensures that the materials can be able to be snipped in any place without unraveling, a characteristic which allows for complete characterization. A flirtatious spirit and a pair of scissors can be able to turn a turtleneck into a plunging V-neck. Miyake’s process of cloth making has so far been a closely guarded secret but fashion designers have now recognized the technology used in the A-POC. They have come to know that the process involves melding the thread into clothing as a new way of entirely making the clothes seamlessly and it has less to do with the bobbins and needles of a garment factory other than the methods of rapid prototyping which are used in manufacturing. Up to now, the real effect of A-POC is yet to be felt all over the world. The demise of the cut and sew method has a significant method since it allowed the manufacturers to save money and time by doing away with the work which was usually done by the skilled workers. The weaving garments of Miyake didn’t need to be sewn and therefore it was seen as the wave of the future. Miyake’s opportunity of producing anything from portable shelters to shoes is greatly attributed to the A-POC technology which is a process that can be used to make a variety of goods. This is because the A-POC process enables any material which can be turned into fiber to work. Through this technology, a series of colorful bean bag chairs and sofas were introduced to the market by the A-POC team which developed them. Miyake’s A-POC team also developed a corn based fiber which was used to construct some other forms of furniture and in recent times, they developed a resin-lined blend which was described by the university of Tokyo to be as a strong as steel Phoenix Art Museum (2003). Issey Miyake is a maverick who found new ways of making things which included reinterpretations of Japanese traditional textile crafts and laser printed fabrics. Such innovations by Miyake are very unusual in the fashion business since most of the people in the fashion catwalks made their money through imitation. It is the smaller companies like that of Miyake that have done a lot of research in the fashion industry and not the mass manufacturers who claim to be innovative. Miyake launched a collection which featured pleats which were so thin that the material looked like crinkled than creased. This collection was launched in 1993 after his five years of R & D. Issey’s pleats rippled through saks and beyond that his technique was quickly copied by many people. In 1995, Miyake attempted to move beyond the cutting and sewing when a 36 year old design engineer called Dai Fujiwara arrived at his studios. The A-POC technology gave rise to the EPOCH technology which was technologically driven from the Miyake and Fujiwara Collaboration. Miyake’s collaboration with Fujiwara led to technologically inspired production lines and designs which quickly responded to the question of the fashion world in the nineties. Their technology was really a very delicate balance between commercial success and high art. Fashion in the nineties always toed a fine line between the dual identities of two poles: the haute couture and the ready to wear steer clothing. Many of the designers’ solutions came from the creation of the two lines whereby they showed their hand made fashions on the runways of Milan and Paris, spreading their names and labels with special collections which were factory produced to the merchandisers who were on the lower end. The Solution for Miyake and Fujiwara did not however come from the two production lines, but instead from the use of new methods of production. They merged creativity of the consumer and computer technology to found the A-POC, an abbreviation which rhymed with EPOCH. This technology lead to the disappearance of the sweatshops which were heavily relied on and the long hours of hand sewing which were too common in the Parisian ateliers were completely done away with Flett (2001). With the arrival of this design engineer, the lower levels of the axis gallery was laid bare with structural diagrams and yarn samples which had views beneath the microscope and a model of threads which were 3 foot long made from plasticine. These graphic designs were created by Taku Satoh. The chain stitch mesh was tightened and therefore prevented the fabric from being unraveled when the fabric was cut and stretchier fibers at the bottom of the layer shrunk. This second model display was called as “the Union” by Miyake and this design involved knitting together the top and the bottom of the tube to form the essential seams Deslaudieres (1989), It was in these fashion catwalks that Miyake’s pleats Please and the A-POC baguettes mix were worn by the hip designers. The crowd which lingered upstairs was not concerned with the innovations which were on display at the downstairs. New vigor and innovation was brought to Miyake’s fashion industry which was A-POC piggy backed. The good thing about the E-POC technology which was used by Miyake was that it defied the tedium of the clothing which was mass produced in the factories despite the use of machines. The consumer had the power to add to the final artistic elements and design of the clothing. The customer therefore was in position to choose the garment length, sleeve length, the style neck and more so, transform the long tabular creation into a piece of clothing which was functional. A pair of scissors therefore made the mass produced clothing to become a dream which was custom made Flett (2001). In conclusion, Issey Miyake and Yamamoto are greatly credited for their creation of the Japanese aesthetic which was of great influence of global fashion in the nineties. It was the emerging industrial and economic boom in Japan that these artists or designers found an inspiration in the fusion between Japan’s explosive consumer technologies and American Pop culture. They placed a lot of emphasis on the admiration of the Japanese traditional art as well as other ideologies and forms of modernism through fiber technology channels. It should also be noted that Miyake’s forms of garments greatly celebrated the movement and vitality of the human body with particular reference to the Japanese, Sudanese and American forms which communicated a liberated global aesthetic Ohtsu (2002). On the other side, Yamamoto’s exhibitions in the fashion catwalks in the nineties exhibited a lot of loyalty to the traditional Japanese clothing which were greatly famed for the kimono inspired shirts and trench coats. Yamamoto found techniques of inclusion of modern finishing details and sportswear constructions into his designs so that to strike a post modern fashion catwalk that imbued with functions of durability and fashion. Miyake and Yamamoto all contributed greatly to the rise of the Japanese fashion through communication of its aesthetic to the global market and thus significantly contributed to the fashion catwalks in the nineties. Their methods of constructions and the materials they used in the fashions were completely unique and different unlike other people’s designs which imitated other trends in the market. Each of these designers is celebrated for his use of the fusing age-old tailoring which put into use couture tailoring and design ethos which were strictly Japanese. The respective collections of these two designers have been closely linked to their deviations from or derivations of the Western fashion because they each used the rich visual Japanese heritage as foundations for the social, aesthetic and sometimes political collages of the cultures found worldwide. Images of the designs Images of Miyake’s designs Source: http://007ty.blog.interia.pl/?id=1802261 Images of Yamamoto’s Designs References Phoenix Art Museum, 2003) A New Wave in Fashion: Three Japanese Designers [exhibition catalogue], Phoenix, Arizona Koren, L. 2004 New Fashion Japan, New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Fraser, K. 2007. Scenes from the Fashionable World. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Sparke, Penny, 2007. Japanese Design. New York: Weatherhill. Coleridge, N. 2008 .The Fashion Conspiracy, New York: Oxford University Press Stegemeyer, A. 2006. Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York: Routledge. Montagu, G. 2004. Yohji Yamamoto: A day in the life of a Designer. In the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 26 February. Flett, K. 2001 Yohji by Knight: Photography at Work. London: Oxford University Press Deslaudieres, A. 1989. "Le long voyage á la recontre de Yohji Yamamoto," in L'Officiel (Paris), Ohtsu, M. 2002. Inside Japanese Business: A Narrative History, 1960-2000. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Sudjic, D. 2000. "Go Yohji, Go!" in the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 2 December. Read More

Yamamoto had a craftsman’s sense of materials since he started each and every collection of the fabric and then left the collections to take their shapes. At most times, people termed his collections as being anti-fashion because they deconstructed but Yamamoto insisted that the aim of his clothes was to evoke emotional responses which will make people to be linked with them on a daily basis. Yohji Yamamoto was born in Tokyo, Japan and started his Company in 1972. His first collection was produced in Tokyo in 1976.

This has an edge over any other designer. Yamamoto constantly and clearly explores the relationship between the feminine and masculine. He makes the clothes for women with an intellectual and artistic bent Sudjic (2000). Yohji Yamamoto has an approach which is philosophical to fashion and he knows that the secret behind the fashion is not just covering the body but creation of an interaction between the body, the person wearing the designs and the essential spirit of the fashion designer. Yamamoto explored new ways of dressing through synthesizing of the western clothing and the indigenous clothing of Japan.

Yamamoto employs methods of draping, wrapping the body, and layering and swathed garments and often refuses to accept ideas about the female sexual display Montagu (2004). Yamamoto does not refer to the Western fashion but instead, he refers to a fixed form of Japanese clothing which have been developed and refined over many years. His anti-directional and anti-fashion garments ignore the current Western developments of in turn influences the western designers. To Yamamoto, beauty is more indefinable and this is expressed vividly in the texture of the materials that he uses rather than applied decoration.

Yamamoto is also interested in the development of new materials just like other Japanese designers. Idiosyncratic is Yamamoto’s source of material which is obtained from a large library where he draws on for inspiration. He consistently refers to a book in which there is a collection of photographs by August Sander. August Sander is a photographer who is based in Cologne and he always took photographs of representative forms in the daily clothes that sharply reflected their lives. Yamamoto’s inspiration also comes from utilitarian outfits like the protective garments which were worn by women in the 1940’s Fraser (2007).

Yamamoto is very uncomprising to the Western eyes and he instead investigates the Japanese traditional conviction in beauty as being not naturally given but instead expressed through the manipulation and creation of possibilities of the materials and colours of the garments. His clothing construction is usually described in the round rather than in the vertical, thus his construction is viewed not from the neck down as it is the in the case of the Western fashion but instead in a rectilinear and 2 dimensional approach.

This approach explores the visual appeal of the asymmetry and the notion of the picturesque portrays a very crucial part in the Japanese philosophy of design in which the irregular forms are hailed for their lack of artifice and therefore their closeness to nature Montagu (2004). The garments of Yamamoto often have very unique pockets, flaps, lopsided collars and hems, always set off when the body is in motion and the labels inside the garments are inscribed with an epithet which reads, “There is nothing which is so boring as having a near and tidy look” Sparke (2007).

Although the costume history is nowadays rife with sculptural manipulations of bodies, the human symmetry nature armature was rarely questioned. Yohji Yamamoto addressed the body as only a single part of the whole integral garment and therefore used asymmetry to be the core design concepts in the creation of garments which are virtually stand alone. This meant that the alternative forms depended on it but were not defined by the body. Issey Miyake was dubbed to be the “Picasso of fashion” but he rarely wanted to be called as an artist.

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