Yoji Yamamoto is a fashion design legend known for his managed 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 Y-3 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 very interesting moment in the fashion world at the moment.
I think there's lots to discuss, but I wanted to start a little bit earlier in your career actually and learn a little bit about your decision or the idea of becoming a designer.
How did you first become a fashion designer and why was this the kind of métier that you chose?
I was born as the only son of a war widow and then when I became five or six years old, my mother gave up that her husband don't come down.
So she did a funeral party with all the funerary 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, like this, and afterwards, she started to decide not to get married again.
She decided to study cutting and sewing and after she graduated from school, she started to work hard, just educating me, just eating together.
She looked like Terry, that made me look at 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 very famous university.
I have been very good boy.
After entering university, I took to myself, maybe it's enough.
And then I started to feel very strange feeling, I don't want to be anything.
I want to make myself stay in moratorium condition. I didn't want to be nothing because from childhood, I noticed life is not fair.
So I have been angry for many, many things around me, even for society, even for country, having angry.
So I didn't want to hit the reality of the graduating university.
So I told my mother, after graduation, can I help you shop?
And she was still a dressmaker?
Yes, she started a dressmaker in the normal cheap house, and the graduating, she became successful, and she opened the shop.
So she had a dressmaking shop in Kabukicho, is an amusement town of Shinjuku, very famous place for amusement.
And I asked her, I don't want to be nothing, so I will 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 assistants.
So for them, you have to study, at least cutting. So we have to go to dressmaking school.
And I said, yes, I can continue to be a student.
And then I went to Bunka to dressmaking school, a very famous school, a moratorium.
What was it like at Bunka? Because it's such a famous school, as you say.
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 went to Bunka. The Bunka dressmaking school was the sort of young girls' rare school.
Like classes for getting marriage, for our arrangement, cooking, dressmaking, and something like that.
Were there many men in the school? Very few.
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.
When I was stepping up to basic design course, design course cross-made taught me that there is a business called the fashion designer.
Even that, I didn't understand.
I didn't know, I didn't understand, what does it mean, fashion design?
I was just wanting to study making course, cutting and sewing.
So after graduate, I got a prize from school, so I was sent to Paris about one year, living in Paris without doing nothing.
I became like a very, very hopeless boy.
Hopeless in what sense?
Because when I studied fashion, it was the moment of the last auto-cute people,
I felt like a real guy, a real guy, a real guy, a real guy, a real guy, a real guy, a real guy.
He started really to wear.
I just studied auto-cute, not really to wear.
After graduating school, I was sent to Paris,
and I found that the old school time is going to finish.
And the new movement, ready to wear, has started.
So when I was sitting in the cafe of Duma Go,
and writing letters to the whole country, to my mother,
it was very, very, very strong shock.
By opening, revolving door of the cafe of Duma Go,
many ready to wear, a facial girl came in,
cancel, Shion Shion, cast her project, Sonia Rikiel.
It was shock, because I only studied,
the old school.
So that is the reason I felt, I'm nothing.
I can't afford it. I have no idea, I felt.
So I decided to come back to Japan,
and started helping mother again,
just taking older and measurement,
and cutting fabric, and the fitting for many types of customers.
And then you were working with your mother again.
And then you spent some time in Tokyo,
continued to work, and then a few years later,
in the early 1980s, you came back.
What brought you back to Paris?
During helping my mother, the outfit, the dresser,
which ordered by so many Tagogloumen,
they were all kind of dull, sexy, gorgeous,
feminine-like, which I didn't like too much.
So during fitting on the customer's body,
and needing down the customer's body,
and fixing the lens, I was thinking,
oh, I won't make something kind of manish,
how to fit for women.
And gradually, this feeling, where you came up.
So that was what became your voice, eventually,
the signature that I'm talking about.
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 the mother's dress-making shop,
and putting money for ready-to-wear company.
Very small company.
This ready-to-wear small company didn't make money
at the longest three years or four years.
It took time.
And then, how do you decide to bring it to Paris?
I was looking on the wall.
And well, I'm dying now in Japan.
Maybe in Paris, there are some very few number of people
can find microbes interesting.
Might be.
So I wanted to open the small shop in Paris.
So this was an idea, an idea, an idea, one.
I came to open the shop.
But exactly the same day, opening the shop,
this is Rika Wakanbo, Rika's mom.
She made a show in some hotel.
I didn't know that, that she comes.
We have been in France, very close.
So one year ago, I talked to her right now.
Let's go to Paris, because we are free by setting in Japan.
Why don't you go to Paris with me?
And she told me, no, my company cannot make it as impossible.
She said, I don't go.
You can go first.
OK.
And I will go first, OK?
But finally, a very cold instantry to Japanese designer.
Made a shop opening show.
She made only a 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 you and Mrs. Kawakura.
Mr. Terry Mewred, Mr. Krolemont.
They were, they looked like kings.
So minds on the Galsons outfit is very far from their quality
and sense of beauty.
So a reaction was very interesting.
Many journalists hated us.
But by us, by us are always looking for something new.
During the generation, only Liberation wrote excellent article
for us, only Liberation.
The others, they said, no, go away, go back.
But by us, they came to the office.
Finally, they broke the elevator because of the.
They broke the elevator.
Yeah.
Because there was so many of them.
Yeah.
I didn't understand what was going on.
What was happening?
And was there something distinctly Japanese about what
you and Mrs. Kawakura 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 similar.
In what way?
A simulator, using many blacks, monotone.
And then some of them are broken, burned, washed
for not only European people, for ordinary people,
our creation, our clockmaking, looked very dirty
and ugly, might be.
And the kind of interest in black, the use of black fabrics
in black color.
Why is that such an important part of your process in your?
It is my private sensibility.
Like in Tokyo, New York, Paris, so many people
from the outside are walking around,
Mesopotamia, 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 stayed in monotone.
So I started keep wearing black or navy blue, not to disturb
people.
This is very, very starting.
And then when I started making clothes,
I didn't use most sentimental colors.
I didn't need color sentiment.
I just wanted to show people cut or washed or broken
or find something close as raw or close as charm for me.
That's 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 a very creative point of view,
a very refined and specific type of creativity
and making it work as a business is probably
one of the biggest challenges that creative people face.
Biggest gamble.
Biggest gamble.
Yeah, it's a huge risk.
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 regularly put something out.
Exactly.
Press, it's quite easy to deliver.
The most difficult thing is gathering money.
Pay me.
Very, very, very hard.
In that meeting also, we were lucky.
Maybe, probably I'm talking about
the very important moment, not only fashion,
in 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 excited.
And they changed the music scene totally.
And as a result, we did the same thing.
A few years ago, in October of 2009,
you faced some big business difficulties.
Oh yeah.
And you know, this is probably a very difficult moment for you
because you learned that you know,
you'd built this very high profile business,
but there were some challenges with the business.
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, charming guy.
So I decided to let him decide business.
And he decided to make everything bigger.
And the moment I felt very frankly, I did enough.
So I would 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.
I told her, leave me.
Don't do that.
I did enough.
I feel even tired.
So don't do that.
No father, let me do that.
So finally, I accepted chapter 11.
Because I had to think about my company, people's life.
So many, so many stuff, assistant, many people.
And leaving company, dying company, people.
It wasn't just about you.
Yeah.
When I started thinking about them, oh, I had to study the game.
It was a very hard moment.
But as far as I made up my mind to do it again,
I became double strong.
There's one really great business success story, I think,
in your career, which pre-saged things that came later.
And that's your, in 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, rare.
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 for a long time, those two worlds were so separate.
Can you talk about how that Adidas collaboration came about
and what you've taken away and what you've learned from it?
After working in Paris about 20 years, I felt
I became too far from the street.
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're simply collectors of strength.
I felt very uneasy.
I felt I came too far from the street.
And then I was surprised that from the United States,
the Sniper Carge started.
Our many businessmen in the morning,
they go to the company wearing suit and sneaker.
And some of the sneaker looked like hungry, like a monster.
But I did, oh, sneaker carge.
It must be interesting to work with sneaker.
So from my side, directly, we call, make a phone call
to Adidas company.
It's interesting to collaborate with me.
Then directly, quickly, it must be interesting.
The answer came up.
So we started it 12 years ago.
The title of the brand was Sportcorgeous.
I didn't understand the meaning of Sportcorgeous.
But anyway, we started and continue 12 years already.
And Y3 now is very successful.
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 where we are.
Everybody seems to be questioning.
Where we've ended up.
There's so much product.
There's so many designers.
There's so many fashion shows.
There's so much waste.
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've been losing my competitor here by year.
In Japan, you mean?
In the world, in the world.
Especially, curling designer decreasing.
Only stylists, they were asked by Dick Maison, Dick House,
and make a show for selling accessories,
not for selling their own creation.
The majority of business became like that.
And I call it mainstream of fashion.
I'm not walking 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.
But 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 doesn't seem sustainable to me,
at least, to continue at this pace with this much volume of things.
What's the solution?
When I speak with young designers, I talk to them.
Shatch your computer.
Don't look at computer.
Don't look at your desire, your future,
your favorite thing in computer.
If you really want to see real thing, real beauty,
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.
If you want to create something, you need real excitement, emotion,
not a superficial vision.
So I talk them, be brain.
You can copy somebody from you very much.
You like very much, you can copy it, copy it, copy it, copy it,
until you're able to copy it, you can find yourself.
Don't look too wide.
If you look the scene too wide, you lose yourself.
You'll be lost.
So 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 beauty of beauty,
holding everything against, against against,
it's a hard way.
It's a life work.
Are you ready to sacrifice yourself, to create something?
I'm asking them.
Thank you, Mr. Young.
Very nice to chat with you.
Good advice.
That's good?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.