YOHJI YAMAMOTO - The Architect of Time

Black as a uniform, impenetrable screen, reflecting multiple images and a monochrome spectrum, between fantasy and reality. Of this material, Yohji Yamamoto sculpts timeless silhouettes. He forms spaces and lets the body express itself, protected under a mille-feuilles of fabrics, while cultivating a natural and sophisticated grace.

Allowing women to wear pieces reserved for men's wardrobes was the driving and rebellious idea of the Japanese designer when he started making coats in 1977. Through the abstraction of the body behind black and pure forms, Yamamoto favors the dream and thus frees himself from considerations linked to trends. The Japanese designer questions the notion of beauty through the use of broken lines and asymmetrical shapes. Self-confident but never snobbish, always enigmatic, the feminine silhouette has a casual air that suits it perfectly.

The Yamamoto woman splits herself, playing with the multiple facets of her personality. She rolls up the sleeves of a loose, light shirt that leaves her free to move. The Japanese master takes particular care in the choice of textiles, such as silk, woven by the family factory Chiso, which specialized in the production of religious garments when it was founded in 1555. Yohji Yamamoto dares to combine the ancient and the modern, silk and neoprene for a constant elegance, inscribed in movement and duration, from morning to night.

The sun passes over her. Draped in a deep black, she absorbs the light, captures the energy. She is a magnet, clothed in her second skin, sparkling with a femininity that is all the stronger for being evoked with subtlety and restraint, and thus engraving her memory in the memory of time.