For a designer who has always privileged scaling back the extroverted above mainstream fashion’s flagrant show-pieces tailored for the haut monde, Yohji Yamamoto was the designer who put on the most exaggerated, and if we could be so bold, showy, show this season. Telling emotion has always been something deeply rooted within Yamamoto’s psyche though, so every touch of this in this season’s arresting collection was natural and instinctive and totally true. Directing his showmanship towards a modern version of his trademark “Hiroshima chic”, Yohji allowed his wilder side to emerge for bursts of sunrise gold, offsetting his benignant appreciation for black. On a broader level though, he stuck to the usual circumvolution of deconstructed whimsically withered forms.
It was more of all the good stuff from then on, baggy two-piece suits and dungarees with portions of elongated scrap fabrics, frayed to perfection, hinting at an antiestablishmentarianism which has a distinct appreciation for beauty. The final look came as a spectacular finale piece that put this theory of design on steroids, piling up a frothy tiered ball gown with a thrush of a deep woodsy floral bouquet, topped off with a motorcycle in headlong abandon. He is a designer remembered for proclaiming of his designs “they are alive: I am alive” and this season his SS15 vision had all the energy that he once opined.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of Style.com