Here in the Night: Yohji Yamamoto Ready-to-Wear Paris Fashion Week Spring / Summer 2015

The avant-garde imagination of Yohji Yamamoto remains a potent force in contemporary fashion design. Since he debuted in Paris in 1983, the designer has followed his own unique path unswayed by trends or temporal affectations. Yohji is known for his signature dramatic silhouettes: often oversized, long lines mixing drapes with various textures and an increasingly bold use of prints and patterns. The impression is always powerful, but speaks from a somewhat austere, academic/avant-garde perspective.

The Ready to Wear Paris Fashion Week Spring / Summer 2015 surprised audiences and confounded expectations with a collection that seemed unabashedly sensual, yet still definitively a product of Yohji's universe. With an edgy engagement of sexuality, the usual strictness and heavy layers of the Yohji women were nowhere to be seen. Rather, the collection was informed by lightness and fluidity. Models were doe-eyed innocents seemingly roused from slumber, their hair worn frizzy and backcombed, with styling deliberately disheveled—a sense of asymmetry in the garments giving an impression of chaos.

But this was carefully controlled chaos: A close assessment revealed a wealth of detail and construction in the garments. Black and white was cut with flashes of gold, the body revealed through sheer delicate lace. The collection’s silhouettes were a testament to Yohji’s skills in deconstruction and reconstruction.

This process and the recombinations of materials gave a sense of the models in a state of undressing or unwrapping as they stalked the catwalk. Jackets were worn knotted and tied to the back or the side, thin spaghetti straps looping the body, holding together black and white slip dresses that seemed to fall off the shoulder in effortless stylish fashion. Sheer jumpsuits in fine lace were worn casually unbuttoned, while asymmetrical suit jackets referenced a typical Yohji aesthetic. The result was a collection that offered another vital chapter in Yohji’s continued sartorial explorations.