Inside Yohji Yamamoto’s Fashion Philosophy

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a rare interview, the influential Japanese designer speaks with BoF’s Imran Amed about the philosophy that underpins his boundary-breaking career.

Background:

After graduating from Keio University with a law degree, Yohji Yamamoto realised he wasn’t interested in the law.

“I didn’t want to join the ordinary society,” he says. “So I told my mother after graduation … ‘I want to help you.’”

She agreed to let him work at her dressmaking shop in Kabukicho, an entertainment district in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, and learn from the sewing assistants if he enrolled at Bunka Fashion College, now famous for training designers such as Kenzo Takada, Junya Watanabe and Yamamoto himself.

After graduating, Yamamoto went on to set up a small ready-to-wear company that slowly acquired buyers in all of Japan’s major cities. This success eventually led him to Paris, where his signature tailoring and draping in oversized silhouettes created an aesthetic earthquake at Paris Fashion Week in 1981.

Since then, Yamamoto has developed a cult following of loyalists who swear by his avant-garde designs. “I’m not working in the mainstream,” he says. “I’m working in the side stream.”

This week on The BoF Podcast, we revisit Imran Amed’s rare interview with the legendary Japanese designer about his storied career — and the mindset designers need to succeed.

Key Insights:

Yamamoto says the fashion industry’s increasingly fast-pace has come at the expense of true creativity. “For me the fashion business became a money business,” he said. “I felt I’ve been losing my competitors year by year.”
Yamamoto believes that modern technology can be a distraction. “When I speak with young designers, I [tell] them shut your computer,” he said. “If you really want to see real things, real beauty, you have to go there by walking.”
Yamamoto believes it’s a designer’s job to completely immerse themselves in design. “If you want to create something, keep resisting the mediocracy of ordinary things. It’s a life's work. Are you ready to sacrifice yourself to create something?”

Additional Resources:

Watch the full interview here: Inside Yohji Yamamoto’s Fashion Philosophy
The Magic of Yohji Yamamoto

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's
0:09.2	Friday, August 26th. Quite often, I'm asked, what is your most memorable interview since you first
0:16.8	started writing BOF? And it's obviously a very tough question, as I've had the honor of
0:21.7	interviewing so many fascinating guests, so many smart people, so many people who inspire me.
0:28.1	Interviewing people is my favorite thing to do even after all these years at the helm of B-O-F.
0:34.6	Who else gets to spend time with some of the most talented people in the world,
0:38.4	listen to their stories and struggles, and ask them for advice on how to succeed in life and work?
0:44.8	But if I'm forced to choose, I usually come back to the interview I conducted with the legendary
0:50.5	designer, Yoji Yamamoto, back in 2016. I've been thinking a lot about this interview
0:57.1	recently, especially since the passing of another innovative Japanese designer Isimiaki a few
1:03.1	weeks ago. I've been reflecting on the lessons and advice that Yoji shared with me, and I thought
1:08.1	now was a good moment to have another listen to Yoji. And for those of you who are more recent followers of the Bof podcast, to listen to Yoji's interview for the very first time. It's one of those conversations that really stands the test of time. And you'll hear some extended pauses as Yoji reflects before he responds, which is a lesson in and of itself.
1:31.1	If you want to watch the video, it's also available on the B.O.F. YouTube channel, so we'll drop a link in the episode notes.
1:38.3	And without further ado, here's Yoji Yamamoto on the BOF podcast.
1:46.4	Yoji Yamamoto on the B.O.F. podcast. Yoji Yamamoto is a fashion design legend, known for his mannish tailoring and a strictly monochromatic color palette.
1:54.2	Yamamoto first hit the international fashion scene in 1981 when he brought his revolutionary design aesthetic to Paris from his native Japan,
2:03.3	creating a fashion earthquake and quickly cultivating a global cult following.
2:08.6	But while his high fashion approach speaks to the fashion forward,
2:12.3	Yamamoto's Y3 collaboration with Adidas pioneered the idea of the fashion meets athletic wear collaboration,
2:20.2	creating an altogether new product category that reaches a much broader consumer base.
2:25.9	Today, in a rare interview to discuss his highs and lows and wisdom from a career spanning
2:31.7	more than 40 years, the business of fashion goes inside
	...

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