Yamamoto, Yohji

(1943- )

   Born in Tokyo, Yamamoto's father died during World War II. As a result, he was primarily raised by his dressmaker mother. Although he graduated with a law degree from Keio University in 1966, he pursued a career in fashion and studied at the prestigious Bunka-fukuso Gakuin fashion school in Tokyo. After designing anonymously for several years, Yamamoto launched his own collection, called Y, in 1972. In 1981, he created fashion history when he showed his collection of Japanese-inspired worker uniforms on models with bald heads and white face paint in Paris. He chose mostly black, distressed fabrics covered in holes for the collection, which were shown on beautiful models wearing flat shoes. Yamamoto's anti-fashion statement marked a new era in the fashion world, known as shabby chic. Throughout his career, Yama-moto worked with longtime collaborator Madame Shimosaka and experimented with ancient Japanese traditions such as shibori (a tie-dye technique) and wabi-sabi (the beauty aesthetic of imperfection). He and compatriot Rei Kawakubo were known for their deconstruc-tivist philosophy and for pioneering the cross-gender movement; hallmarks of their individual style.

   In 1984, Yamamoto introduced a men's line that built on this philosophy and, in 1996, he marketed an eponymous fragrance. In partnership with Adidas in 2001, he launched a line of athletic shoes and, in 2003, a less expensive men's and women's line of clothing under the Y-3 label. Convinced that his clothes were more couture than ready-to-wear, Yamamoto shocked the industry by showing his 2002 ready-to-wear collection during couture week in Paris. Yamamoto has published two books, Talking to Myself (2002) and A Magazine 2 (2005). In 2005, he was honored with a retrospective at Paris's Musée de la Mode et du Textile in a show entitled Juste des Vêtements (just clothes). Yamamoto operates 160 stores in Japan and 6 stores outside of Japan and sells to 200 stores worldwide.