Yellow strapless silk dress and oversized coolie hat covered with draped silk, Yohji Yamamoto, Spring/Summer 1997
This exhibition explores the work of idiosyncratic and ground-breaking designer Yohji Yamamoto. Fabric, he said, 'is everything'. This deep interest in textiles is at the heart of his approach to design.
Yamamoto became internationally renowned in the early eighties for challenging traditional notions of fashion by designing garments that seemed oversized, unfinished, played with ideas of gender or fabrics not normally used in fashionable attire such as felt or neoprene. Other works revealed Yamamoto's unusual pattern cutting, knowledge of fashion history and sense of humour. His work is characterised by a frequent and skilful use of black, a colour which he describes as 'modest and arrogant at the same time'.
This retrospective, experienced through a series of site-specific installations throughout the V&A and beyond, includes Yamamoto's menswear for the first time. The main exhibition space houses over 60 creations and a multi-media timeline which reveals Yamamoto's wider creative output.
Sleeveless white felt dress with large collar, Yohji Yamamoto, Autumn/Winter 1996-7, Juste des Vêtements exhibition, Musée de la Mode et du Textile, Paris, 2005 © Courtesy of Gael Amzalag
Yohji Yamamoto installation in Gallery 38
Yohji Yamamoto installation in Gallery 38
Wapping Project satellites
As part of this exhibition, two further satellite installations are on display across London.
Yohji Making Waves, Wapping Projects, March 2011, photography by Imogen Eveson
Yohji's Women, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for Yohji Yamamoto, Spring/Summer 1999, Wapping Bankside, March 2011
Yohji Yamamoto: The poet of black from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.
Yohji Yamamoto reflects on his thirty year career in fashion. In this 20-minute film shot in Yamamoto's Tokyo studio, the designer provides a laconic, engaging and sometimes passionate commentary on his career and design values. He considers how his work has evolved since his Paris debut and explains why he designs so differently for men and women, and also provides a withering personal analysis of the current state of the fashion industry.
