YOHJI YAMAMOTO

Born in Tokyo in 1943, Yohji Yamamoto graduated in law from Keio University before turning to fashion, earning his degree from Bunka Fashion College in 1969. Raised by his mother, a dressmaker who built her trade in post-war Shinjuku after his father was killed in the war, Yamamoto inherited both his tailoring instinct and his understanding of clothing as protection rather than display. He founded Y's in 1972 and showed in Tokyo from 1977, then arrived in Paris in 1981 alongside Rei Kawakubo, in a moment the press labelled Hiroshima Chic: a permanent rupture in Western fashion's understanding of form, colour, and the body. Over five decades he has remained devoted to black, to loose silhouettes that refuse to reveal, and to a romantic deconstruction of tailoring that treats the suit as raw material. He has designed costumes for Wim Wenders, Takeshi Kitano, Pina Bausch, and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth.

The brand operates across an extensive and evolving network of lines: Y's (1972, first line, womenswear built on the premise of dressing women in men's clothing), Y's for Men (1979, menswear diffusion), Yohji Yamamoto (1981, mainline womenswear and menswear, Paris debut), Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME (1984, menswear runway line and the most sought after by collectors), Costume d'Homme (1980s, conventional tailoring reinterpreted through Yamamoto's silhouette), Workshop (1980s, leisurewear and casualwear), Y's for Men Red Label (AW1993, clothes Yamamoto himself would wear, later absorbed into Y's for Men), Yohji Yamamoto Noir (1990s, womenswear in black for everyday life), A.A.R. (1997, menswear diffusion with Japanese suiting house D'urban, discontinued), Y's Red Label (2006, womenswear with Michiko Suzuki, discontinued), Coming Soon (2008, unisex casual diffusion, discontinued), S'YTE (2011, accessible contemporary line, online only), Ground Y (2015, unisex and genderless contemporary line).