Inside Yohji Yamamoto's Fashion Philosophy | The Business of Fashion

yoji yamamoto is a fashion design legend known for his manish tailoring and a strictly monochromatic color palette yamamoto first hit the international fashion scene in 1981 when he brought his revolutionary design aesthetic to paris from his native japan creating a fashion earthquake and quickly cultivating a global cult following but while his high fashion approach speaks to the fashion forward yamamoto's y3 collaboration with adidas pioneered the idea of the fashion meets athletic wear collaboration creating an altogether new product category that reaches a much broader consumer base today in a rare interview to discuss his highs and lows and wisdom from a career spanning more than 40 years the business of fashion goes inside yoji yamamoto's fashion philosophy mr yamamoto thank you for taking the time to sit down with me it's a it's a very interesting moment in the fashion world at the moment and i think um there's lots to discuss but i wanted to start um a little bit earlier in your career actually and and learn a little bit about your decision or um the idea of becoming a designer how how did you first become a fashion designer and you know why why was this the the kind of metier that you chose i was born as the only son of war widow okay and then when i was when i became five six years old my mother gave up that her husband don't come back okay so uh she did a federal party with all the family and i didn't understand what was going on because i don't have any memory about my father because he went to the world when i was a baby one year and three months so i have no memory about my father so in me he doesn't exist but my mother is doing something some ceremony and i started where it is yeah and afterwards she started decide not to get married again she decided to study cutting and sewing and after she graduated from school she started work hardly just educating me just eating together she looked like terribly and that made me looking looking the society through my mother very hard working mother so i disguised to be a good boy for hard-working mother until i passed the exam of a very famous university i have been very good boy okay after entering university i talk to myself maybe it's enough and then i my studies feel like a very strange feeling i don't want to be nothing i want to make myself stay in moratorium condition i want to be i wanna i didn't want to be nothing because from child first i noticed uh life is unfair so i have been angry for many many things around me even for society even for country i've been hungry so i i didn't want to hit the reality after graduation creating the university so i i talked to my mother after graduation can i help your shop and she was still a dressmaker she yeah she she started as a dress maker in in the normal cheap house and gradually she became successful and she opened the shop okay so she had a dress making shop in kabukicho is an amusement town of shinjuku very famous place for amusement when i asked her that i don't want to be nothing so i want to help you she didn't talk to me two weeks but finally i showed her real myself then she said finally at least we have four or five sewing assistant so for for for them you have to be able to study at least cutting so you have to go to just making school and i said yeah got it i can continue to be a student yeah and then i went to bunker what was it like at bunka because it's um it's such a famous school as you say yes and i think compared to some of the fashion schools or design schools in the west the approach for teaching is really different at that moment i mean at the moment i i went to bunker the the burn cultures making school was the sort of young girls not real school it's like uh classes for getting more preparation from getting marriage for our arrangement cooking and dressmaking and something like that were there many men in the school very few okay and was it during that period when you were studying at bunka that you first developed or found your design voice it's your chance to discover your creativity i didn't even know that there exists so the business called the fashion designer i didn't know that yeah and when i was stepping up to physical studio design course design course classmate taught me that there is a business so called fashion designer even that i didn't understand i didn't know i didn't understand what does it mean fashion design i just wanting i was just wanting to study making clothes cutting and sewing so after graduate i got a prize from school i was sent to paris about one year living in paris without nothing without doing nothing i became like a very very hopeless boy hopeless in what sense because when i studied fashion it was is the moment of the last youtube people pierce just he started ready to wear so i just studied autistic not ready to wear after graduating school i was sent to paris and i found attitude time is going to finish and the new movement of ready to wear has started yeah so when i was uh you know sitting in the cafe of dimago and writing letters to to home country i took my mother [Music] it was very very very strong shock by opening revolving door of capital many ready-to-wear fashionable girls came in kenzo joshua castelbach [Music] i was shocked yeah because i only studied yeah so i in that very the reason i felt i'm nothing i i can't i can't afford it i have no idea i felt so i decided to come come back to japan and started helping mother again just taking order and measurement and the cutting fabric and the fitting for many type of customers and then you were working with your mother again yeah and then you spent some time in tokyo and you continued to work and then you know a few years later in the early 1980s you came back what brought you back to paris during helping my mother the uh the outfit dresses which ordered by so many type of women they were all kind of doll-like sexy gorgeous feminine-like which i didn't like too much so uh during feeding fitting on the on the customer's body and kneeling down across my body and fixing the lens up i was thinking oh i want i want to make something kind of manage outfit for women and gradually this this feeling gradually came up so that's that was what became your voice eventually the signature that i'm talking about yeah it came as a way of rejecting what you were seeing and the women that your mother was dressing so i was very hungry yeah you're right that moment i was holding my dynamite in my mind so at the beginning i was making money at mother's day's making shop and putting money for ready to complain very small company this ready to wear small company didn't make money at the longest three years or four years it took time yeah and then how did you decide to bring it to paris i was looking on the wall and well i've done enough in japan maybe in paris there are some very few number of people can find my clothes interesting might be so i wanted to open a small shop in paris so this was 1980 or 1981 i came to open the shop but exactly same day of my opening shop this is recoverable like a song she made a show in some hotel i didn't know that that she counts we are being friends very close so one year ago i i talked to her right now let's go to paris because we are free about sitting in japan why don't you go to paris with me and she told me no no my company cannot make it it's impossible she said i don't go you can go first so okay and i will go first okay but finally very quickly coincidentally two japanese designer made a shop opening show she made only show in hotel anyway two designers from japan made a show and what was the reaction because at the time in paris the contemporary fashion was very different from what from what you and mrs mister terry murray mr crone montana they were they were they look like kings right so mines minds on the girlfriend's outfit is very far from their their quality and sense of beauty so reaction was very interesting many journalists hated us but by us buyers are always looking for something new during the journeys only liberation wrote excellent article for us only the beloved the others they said oh no go away yeah go back but buyers they came to the office finally they broke the elevator because of they broke the elevator yeah because there were so many of them yeah i didn't understand what was going on what was happening and was there something you know distinctly japanese about what you and ms kawakubo brought to paris was there something similar or that something that tied it together or was it just kind of a happy act kind of similar kind of thing in what way asymmetrical and then using many blacks monotone and then some of them are broken burned washed for not only european people for ordinary people our creation of crowd making looked looked very very dirty and ugly might be and they and the kind of interest in black the use of black fabrics and black color you know why why is that such an important part of your process and your it it is my private sensibility you know like like in tokyo new york paris so many people from the outside are working around metropolitan and in the city when i looked so many fashions so many colors so many decorations it looked very ugly i felt at least myself should not make people's eyes disturbed by using horrible color so i stay in monotone so i i started keep wearing black or navy blue not to not to disturb people this is very very sturdy and then when i'm making when i started making clothes i didn't use mostly sentimental colors i didn't need color colors sentiment i just wanted to show people cut or wash or broken or find something closest rule or closest charm for me right not for ordinary customer the other thing i wanted to spend some time on is thinking about fashion as a business i mean you said earlier that your colleagues or friends that you met at bunka some of them were the ones who told you about the world as fashion design as a business and clearly taking taking a very creative point of view a very you know refined and specific type of creativity and making it work as a business is probably one of the biggest challenges that creative people face gamble biggest gamble biggest gamble yeah yeah it's it's a huge risk yeah huge risk i've seen it happen to young designers that i know that all of a sudden they get a lot of attention they're in the press the media the buyers are coming to them and they're not yet equipped to handle that business side which is then you have to deliver and then you have to you know regularly put something out exactly plus it's quite easy to deliver the most difficult thing is gathering money pay me yeah cash flow very very very hard yeah in that meaning also we were lucky maybe probably i'm talking about the very important moment not only fashion a music scene there appeared beatles rolling stones they came out the adults and the american people didn't understand but young people they were all they got it got it excited and they changed the music scene totally and as a result we did the same thing yeah a few years ago in october of 2009 you face some big business difficulties oh yeah um and you know this is probably a very difficult moment for you because you learned that you know you built this very high profile business but there are some challenges with the business you know how how have things changed for you since then you found an investor to kind of help run and manage the business side and now you're free oh yeah one guy came to my company he wanted to pre-manage management of my company and he looked very very attractive coming by so i decided let me decide business and he decided to make everything bigger and then craft at that moment i felt very frankly i did enough so i don't want to have chapter 11 i wanted to finish my career but my daughter she shouted don't finish now we start again my daughter made it so your daughter kept you going she's the one who convinced you yeah i i told her leave me don't do that don't i did enough i i feel even tired so don't do that but no father let me do that so i finally i i accepted chapter 11. because i i i had to think about my company people's life so many so many stuff assistant many people and living company dying company people it wasn't just about you yeah when i started think about them oh i had to study again it was a very hard moment but as far as i made up my mind to do it again i became i feel like i became double star strong there's um there's a one really great business success story i think in your career which presaged things that came later and that's your been your collaboration with adidas which shows that some business partnerships can be really great and really successful yeah very unfair and rare and rare yeah and if you look now what's happening in fashion and the interest and the combination and the intersection between very high fashion and athletic clothing it's everywhere now in a way you were the pioneer because you know for a long time those two worlds were so separate yeah can you talk about how that adidas collaboration came about and and what you've taken away and what you've learned from it after after working in paris about 20 years i felt i became too far from the street yeah i stopped i started feeling that who is wearing my creation i can't find people who are wearing my outfit in the street maybe in the museum maybe they are they are simply collectors of strengthening i felt very uneasy i felt i came too far from the street and then i got surprised that from in the united states that the sneaker culture started are many businessmen in the morning they go to the company wearing suit and sneaker and some of sunika looks like ugly like monster but i did oh sneaker culture maybe it must be interesting to work with sneaker so uh from my side directly call make a phone call to adidas company aren't you interested in collaborate with me then directly quickly might be must be interesting the answer came back so we started it 12 years ago then the title of the brand was sport gorgeous i didn't understand the meaning of sport gorgeous but anyway we started and continued 12 years already and y3 now is very successful yeah before we finish i wanted to ask you a few questions about fashion today because as i mentioned at the beginning it's a really interesting moment in fashion because everybody seems to be questioning everybody seems to be questioning questioning where we've ended up yeah yeah yeah you know there's there's so much product there's so many designers there's so many fashion shows there's so much waste yeah if what what do you think of the fashion industry the fashion system now for me fashion business became money business and they look sexy and messy and i felt i have been losing my competitor year by year in japan you mean in the world in the world especially growing designer decreasing only stylists they were asked by big maison big house and make a show for selling accessories not for selling their own creation the majority of business became like that and i call call it mainstream old-fashioned i'm not working in the mainstream i'm walking in the side street side dark street it is quite comfortable if i joined the mainstream maybe i was killed company would go down i mean what do you think as an industry what do you think we should be doing to solve this problem though because it it doesn't seem sustainable to me at least to continue at this pace with this much volume of things what's the solution [Music] hmm i don't know i don't know when i speak with young designers i i told them shut your computer don't look at computer don't look at your desire your future your uh favorite thing in computer uh if you really want to see real thing real beauty you have to you have to go there by walking and go there and touch it and smell it don't use computer otherwise you cannot get real emotion you need if if you want to create something you need rare excitement emotion not a superficiary vision so i i i told them be brian you can copy somebody whom you very much you like very much you can copy it copied copied copy copy that until until end of the copy you can find yourself don't look too you know too wide if you if you look look the scene too wide you lose yourself you'll be you'll be lost so uh you young people are not yet really having individuality or strong power creating is making life so if you want to create something keep resisting to the to the mediocrity ordinary thing against against it's a hard way it's it's a life work are you ready to sacrifice yourself to to create something i'm asking them thank you mr yanno very nice to chat with you it's good advice that's good yeah thank you thank you

Channel: The Business of Fashion

Views: 278,502

Rating: 4.9731545 out of 5

Keywords: Business, business, Luxury, Fashion Business, Imran Amed, Fashion, Yohji Yamamoto, insider, fashion, Paris, Japan, The Business of Fashion

Id: pSJsqYH-hK4

Length: 39min 7sec (2347 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/blovetopia]

As an ex-painter and redditor the "lessons to young designers" hit me right in the feels, feels bad. He sounds like a great teacher.