January 16, 2013

Big in Japan

First published 17th February 2012

Both firm fans of black; both defiantly anti-fashion in terms of their garment design and adherence to trends; and both born in Tokyo just a year apart from each other, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto were the very deserving focus of ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’, an exhibition I visited at London’s Barbican Centre about a year ago that also featured a broad selection of jaw-droppingly incredible pieces by structural messiah and Hiroshima survivor Issey Miyake; Kawakubo’s former apprentice and king of ‘duvet chic’ Junya Watanabe; and Jun Takahashi, who creates some of the most fantastically mental clothes I’ve ever seen.

Don’t want to ditch the duvet? Now you don’t have to.

The reason I love Rei Kawakubo is that, for all her campaigning against society’s established perceptions of beauty, she creates some pretty fucking beautiful designs. My particular favourites of hers are what I like to call her ‘lumpy tablecloth’ pieces; gingham dresses stuffed with inelegant wads of foam to create lumbering hunchbacks, giant flapping groins and nappy-like derrieres. They’re the sartorial equivalent of Quasimodo and kind of remind me of Bib Fortuna from Star Wars (why do I keep going on about Star Wars?), yet they look kind of great – how is this possible? I haven’t worn gingham since the days of kiss-catch on the school playing field circa 1995 and I have enough ass issues without the added worry of looking like I’ve got a six-month supply of Tena Lady stuffed down my knickers, but Rei makes it work… somehow.

Bulky minge.

Saying that actually, I’ve always wondered what it’d be like if fashion brought back bustles. I remember seeing a particularly humongous one in the V&A when I was a kid and being completely mesmerised by the thing. They are kind of awesome but a bit of a pain in the arse (ahaha I’m so funny) on public transport – believe me, I know, I went to a Halloween party in central London dressed as Marie Antoinette in a fully boned 18^thcentury crinoline once. But Rei Kawakubo’s bustles don’t look particularly uncomfortable, they’re just proper ridiculous. I mean, check out her pink waffle-pattern bustled maxi skirt, it’s preposterous. It looks like a cross between an Early Learning Centre play tunnel and a pink wafer.

Ridonkulous.

I could dribble on for hours about Rei, but I want to talk a bit about Yohji so if you want a less abstract appraisal of her work, or that of any of the other designers featured in the Barbican exhibition, I recommend getting your mitts on the catalogue. It’s called ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’, funnily enough, and it’s by Akiko Fukai, Barbara Vinken, Susannah Frankel and Hirofumi Kurino.

Right. So, some months after I saw ‘Future Beauty’ I visited the V&A’s Yohji Yamamoto exhibition, which was a complete accident because I was only really there to see ‘The Cult of Beauty’ – another amazing exhibition but one that has nothing to do with Japanese fashion so I’ll save that story for another day. The Yamamoto show – his first major solo exhibition in the UK – was totally stunning, with pieces arranged loosely in colour groups in a single, large, white room.

Some of these are very Vivienne Westwood aren’t they…

For someone who likes black so much, Yamamoto’s use of colour is pretty remarkable. I especially love his mismatched dress and hat sets, which include an ethereal white Regency frock teamed with a toning chunky-knit beanie and a canary-yellow strapless origami dress topped off with a colour-coordinated umbrella hat.

You can stand under my um-ber-ella, ella, ella, eh, eh…

Like Kawakubo, Yamamoto is a fan of structure and definitely not afraid to play with volume. The most interesting example of this can best be described rather crudely as a vaginal bustle dress – that is with the volume at the front rather than the back – which was exhibited with a matching unbelted cotton trench. I am also deeply in love with Yohji’s ‘Don’t do that’ jacket, which is embroidered with a manicured lady hand being slapped away by a man’s arm – though completely the wrong way round if you ask me…