yohji yamamoto f/w 2024-25

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BLACK BIRD

Yohji Yamamoto F/W 2024-25

 

Photography by OLA RINDAL

Laëtitia Gimenez Adam, style

Popo Nauczyciel and Assa Sidibé, models

Simone Schofer at Artistry, casting director

Joseph Pujalte at Bryant Artists, hair

Celine Martin at Art + Commerce, make-up

Tokio Okada, photographer’s assistant

Barbara Anthofer, stylist’s assistant

 

INTERVIEW WITH YOHJI YAMAMOTO AT HIS PARIS STUDIO AFTER HIS FALL/WINTER 2024-25 SHOW

by OLIVIER ZAHM

portraits by OLIVIER ZAHM

 

OLIVIER ZAHM — We’re doing an issue about magic because the planet and the times are so dark and complicated that we’re looking for alternatives, different ways of approaching the world. Politics doesn’t work. Science and innovation don’t work. AI doesn’t work. Everything seems to be heading deeper and deeper into a dead end. Maybe magic can open different doors that can help us. You live in the magical city of Tokyo, yes?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — For the past seven or eight years, I’ve been living in the middle of the city, but before that I was living outside of Tokyo. I found so much nature, and I enjoyed playing with it. Mud, the  small trees… God lives there.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Japan has something magical to offer visitors — we feel something very different and special there. You also have the incredible tradition of Shintoism, where there are eight million kami.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, Gods.

OLIVIER ZAHM — That’s wonderful. We don’t have this in Europe. We believe that God has one house — it’s called church. Outside of it, you can ignore spirituality. [Laughs]

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Exactly. I don’t like that.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Do you know what I love in Tokyo? The little streets and all the little plants in front of the houses and on the sidewalks. That’s magical to me — this love for little plants that people keep alive.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — You should go not only to the city but also to the countryside. You’ll find something else.

OLIVIER ZAHM — The city today is becoming more dense, polluted, and crowded, with a lot of traffic. Do you just accept this, or do you enjoy the mess?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I enjoy the mess. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM —  What’s your favorite part of Tokyo? Do you still have secret places to share?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, I do. But I don’t want to talk about them. [Laughs] Next time you come to Tokyo, I’ll take you to a secret place. Or I’ll invite you to the town where I was born. It’s such a dangerous area. I’m not very courageous, but I will do it for you.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You love Tokyo, but Paris as well. You’ve always been faithful to Paris.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I was forced to be like that.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You’ve never had the same relationship with New York?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I like New York. I like the United States. There are so many types of people living together there, but I cannot imagine how they share their lives. For me, it’s a mystery.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes, that’s true. Mysterious. Can you tell me more about your attachment to Paris? Because French people feel honored that you come regularly to Paris, that you’re still based in Paris, that you have a Parisian team. For us, it’s a bit of Tokyo coming to Paris, and that’s very precious. What brought you to Paris?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I was young and attending university, and in the third year, my friends all started to prepare for exams, to enter some famous big company afterward. I didn’t want that, so I traveled to Russia, then to Northern Europe. After Germany, I arrived in Paris.

OLIVIER ZAHM — That’s a great trip. Did you take pictures?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — No. I don’t like taking pictures.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You like to look at pictures.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. Memories, impressions — those are very important. When I arrived in Paris, at the Gare du Nord, suddenly there was the sound of people talking loudly, and people were smoking strong cigarettes. And with the noise and the strong cigarettes, I felt, “Oh, I’m back.” I felt like this was my city.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You immediately liked it?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. Just for these two reasons: the smell of cigarettes and the sound. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM — Maybe we attach too much value to the visual, and we don’t value enough the sounds and smells around us.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Exactly. Sounds and smells are very important.

OLIVIER ZAHM — People say that for the Japanese, Paris seems trashy and messy. What was it like when you arrived at the beginning of the ’70s?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — At that time, Europeans didn’t have a deep knowledge of Asian people, especially the Japanese. So, I was treated like a stranger. I was angry, but at the same time, I felt, “Oh, it’s natural because I came from a very faraway island.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote the book Empire of Signs. For students, it was the first book to open our minds to Tokyo. He was a semiologist, and basically his idea was that in Japan, everything is a sign. Everything is assigned meaning, and everything has something to tell you, but in a subtle way.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Even the Japanese language is not always clear. When we speak in Japanese, we have to imagine what people are talking about.

OLIVIER ZAHM — That leaves space for interpretation.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Were you exposed to fashion when you were very young?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I had no philosophy of fashion in the beginning. At the end of World War II, when I was two or three years old, my father was sent to the army. So, I have no memory of him, and my mother decided that she wouldn’t get married again.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, no man in the family.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — No man, no father. I knew from that moment on that women were very strong.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes. That’s why we love them so much.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. Respect and love.

OLIVIER ZAHM — I heard that your mother made clothes for a living.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — She went to school for three years to study how to make outfits and costumes. So, she sent me to a countryside home, where my grandmother and great-grandmother were living. It was so beautiful. We had the river three minutes away, a mountain two minutes away. And we had the sea seven minutes away.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Fantastic. And you learned dressmaking and patterns with them?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — A lot, a lot…

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, you learned a lot from them. And you got inspiration from your everyday  life in the countryside?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Exactly. I grew up in nature.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Did you also get inspiration from looking at women?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I didn’t look at women because I knew women were strong. It felt dangerous. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes. Dressing women is a bit sacred.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I didn’t feel that way because my mother worked so hard after graduating, until late at night, and very often she hit me. After that, she fell on the floor and asked me to massage her feet. That was my punishment. So, I was like a sovereign of women. Strong women.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And so, you were raised by your mother in a woman’s world. All the men had gone to war at the time.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. When the war finished, I was just two or three years old. I didn’t know what had happened in the world. My mother was suffering and making a big effort to raise me. And she was always angry about something. Her family wanted to hold a funeral party for my father, but she refused. After two years, she finally agreed to a goodbye ceremony. I don’t have any memory of my father, but sometimes I feel my father pushing me a bit, even now.

OLIVIER ZAHM — That’s amazing. He’s still helping you.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, he lost his dream because he was taken by the war.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, you have no memory of him, but you can feel him.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, I can feel him.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Your story makes me feel how Japanese people can be hard on themselves and very radical. Are you like that? Are you very disciplined?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I am. If I hadn’t become a fashion designer, I’d be in prison. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM — With the yakuza. Or maybe you would have been a musician because you love music so much.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, very much. I create the soundtracks for my shows. I play guitar, and I sing with the harmonica.

OLIVIER ZAHM — That’s very American.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. I was inspired by American music, especially the blues.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, you do your own music, and it’s an integral part of the show. Your fashion shows are like an artist’s performance. It’s all you — the music, the looks, the casting, the way they walk, the lighting. Everything is a composition.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Everything is a coincidence. Sometimes nature, society, or the world gives its magic to me when I work hard.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Magical, even. Do you think that fashion or a dress can be magical, in the sense that they can be transformative, helping you to change things subtly?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. After graduating from university, I told my mother, “I don’t want to work for a famous company.” She got mad: “What do you want?” I said, “I want to study fashion, learn how to make an outfit.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — You were a Japanese boy after the war, very disciplined. But how did you become an artist? That’s magical, too.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I don’t think of myself as an artist. The result of what I do becomes kind of like art, but I’m not aiming to make art. Art is very far from me.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You think so? But people recognize you as an artist.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — When I started doing fashion shows in Paris, people didn’t use my name. Le Japonais — that’s all.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yohji, Le Japonais. [Laughs] Your long-lasting friendship and collaboration with Wim Wenders is beautiful.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Fifteen years after I started doing shows in Paris, the Centre Pompidou asked me to do an exhibition. I told them I didn’t want to because I had only worked for 15 years — it was too early. A week later, the same person asked me: “How about a film?” I said yes. I was called to the office of the Pompidou. When I arrived, Wim Wenders was waiting for me, and we looked at each other. We’re the same type of man because although he’s two years younger than me, we have the same memories — our cities, Tokyo and Berlin, were bombed. We shared many things mentally, and we became like brothers.

OLIVIER ZAHM — It was incredible to see him walking in your fall/winter 2024 menswear show. I loved it.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — His wife called me: “Hey, Yohji, Wim wants to walk in your show.” I was surprised.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Let’s speak about love. Is it at the center of your life or at the periphery?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — There are so many types of love — this is my conception. It has happened to me four or five times in my life, frankly. But finally, love is quite easy to lose.

OLIVIER ZAHM — I agree.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — I notice that when women stop loving me, they forget me. But I never forget someone I have loved.  There is such unfairness in love. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM — Men are sometimes a bit too nostalgic, like we’re stuck in the past.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Being nostalgic means you become weak.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Because it goes nowhere. You can’t be nostalgic because to be able to do a new collection every season, you have to look forward. You have to be optimistic.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes. Especially when I’m driving a car, ideas form. The light turns red, and I have to stop in front of people walking. I watch them, and they give me inspiration.

OLIVIER ZAHM — We said at the beginning of the interview that the planet is becoming very dark. Do you stay optimistic, Yohji?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Not really. I feel the earth is going to be destroyed. So, I won’t fight anymore.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Is there a big difference between dressing women and dressing men?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Not really. If I have to talk about a difference, men’s bodies are very straight, compared with women’s. Women’s bodies are more complicated.

OLIVIER ZAHM — I really miss Tokyo. The next issue of Purple will be about Japan. I think it’s an interesting moment for Japan in the sense that it stays a bit apart, keeps its traditions, and doesn’t try to go into this crazy competition.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Yes, exactly. We want to keep our religion and our history.

OLIVIER ZAHM — I believe that Tokyo and Japan are interesting for the soul.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — But I feel — and this is my own opinion — that Japanese people are losing their soul.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You think so? Do you know why?

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Because of the situation in which they live. The government doesn’t care about poor people. I’m very angry about that.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes, exactly. When I started Purple, it was a small fanzine. And we were very inspired by Tokyo. Tokyo print, the books of photographers in Tokyo, and all the little magazines were really inspiring for us. That was the source for us. We were obsessed with Tokyo. So, for me, it’s important to revisit and rediscover it because it’s been such a long time now.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO — Come to Japan as soon as possible.

END