Figure 1: Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme SS12

The Figure 1 above is a runway shot of a model wearing wide culottes that closely resemble a skirt. To the uninitiated, wide culottes might be a metaphor for a skirt. In reality, the cut is a specific hakama pants worn by Japanese men in the field of aikido made famous by Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of traditional Japanese art of aikido (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Traditional Aikido Clothing

These common terms appear in fashion retailers online as it is necessary to catalogue and define the garments they stock for the ease of the consumer. Any process of cataloguing requires categories (Cabonero, 2013) and when those categories are binary and leave no room for vagueness, there is no allowance for anything that falls out of the specific categories. This categorisation causes designers to design within set boundaries, rejecting the categorisation will invoke creative outcomes like the ones produced by Kawakubo. Yamamoto has managed to find a middle ground that appeals to his market while keeping garments uniquely deconstructed.

For the Spring/Summer 2015 season, Yamamoto designed garments that were able to tie and cinch with rope and strings. For the runway, the rope and strings were let loose and the garments looked like it was falling apart as seen in Figure 3. It was in essence a story of a woman coming undone in a sensual way. The ornaments dangled while revealing parts of the body.

Yohji Yamamoto

In Figure 4, it is seen that his illustration style involves only the key essentials of his design methodology being shape and silhouette. Every other detail is taken out, button placements, a face, hems and even the existence of layered garments. The notion of the garment itself is bare, it could be a figure wearing an overcoat standing sideways or a figure wearing a dress holding on to a walking cane with the left hand. This ill-defined illustration allows Yamamoto to be flexible in creation. If the ā€˜Evaluationā€™ stage of the Basic Cycle of Design claims properties have to be compared with the corresponding desired properties in the design specification (i.e. from illustration to final product) and in doing so, there should always be differences and it more often than not excels in making the product creatively unique (Roozenburg and Eekels, 1995). In doing so, Yamamoto has created unique garments that while follow a structure, unlike Kawakubu, still introducing a unique flair.

In this way, the creative process is heightened as it allows for one more point of innovation. In his autobiography, My Dear Bomb (2010), Mr Yamamoto explains the complex conceptual persona of him as a designer. He affirms sketches are just to convey general mood and that there is no need to fill in the real details. ā€œIn some of these sketches, with just a few quick lines, I might even outline something like a wild birdā€ (Yamamoto, 2010). If the illustration includes a face, a hairstyle, fancy shoes and so on, it means the job of the pattern cutter becomes a literal transition. In doing so, he stops defining terms, the basis of designing.

It is not just terminology that is problematic but the need to define garments using existing linguistics. As we categorise garments with preexisting terms, the term itself induces presumptions about the form and function, subconsciously or not. This eventually will limit opportunities to step outside these boundaries and therefore restrict the chance for creative exploration. A pencil skirt, for example, has strict design features and methods of wearing. Even if we are not using the term to refer to any specific piece of clothing, ā€˜skirtā€™ as vague as it might be has a very strict and specific concept. It has specifications that we take for granted, such as a possible vent, zip closures and waistbands. It also has cultural and gender connotations being suitable for someone of a female gender. By merely categorizing a probable design as a skirt, we dictate form and function without even knowing. In this way, this proves the idea of linguistic determinism by determining our perception and response to a garment.

Yamamoto, using his Japanese cultural knowledge while showing to a mostly western audience has seemingly negated terminology. Whilst the terminology for Yamamoto exists in his own way, the western audience would not be familiar at first hand.