Yohji Yamamoto on Fashion, Creativity, and What Keeps Him Inspired

Yohji Yamamoto doesn’t want to explain his collections. He’d rather you decide the meaning behind all the artfully tattered deconstruction yourself. It’s been his philosophy for decades, and it still holds true today. Such was the case at the designer’s spring/summer 2027 show tonight at his usual opulent Hôtel de Ville venue in Paris. This time around, Yamamoto delivered woven, distressed dresses, gowns of gossamer-fine knits, shredded strips of wool, and goth caftans with a kind of religious precision. The flowing textiles, layered, layered, and layered yet again, read as a kind of protective armor.

About a year and a half ago, the label began placing cards on guests’ chairs urging them to “be present and experience the presentation with your eyes rather than your screen.” Because of that, there are a lot fewer phones in the air at Yamamoto’s shows lately. His shows usually feel calm compared to the typical high-energy music and production of most mainstream presentations, with a soundtrack ranging from complete silence to acoustic guitar, Japanese easy listening, or recordings of the designer himself singing.

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Backstage after the show, the 82-year-old designer (who turns 83 tomorrow) is leaning against the wall as a line of models who want to take selfies with him forms. He’s one of the last of his kind, a bit of an eccentric legend who still runs his namesake house himself and who plans to do so until the very end. I ask him what the most important thing he wants to share with people now is, and he responds cryptically: “Enjoy summer.” He pauses. “Because the ice of the North Pole is melting. But I don’t know if we should suffer too much. Just enjoy summer.”

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Peter White//Getty Images

As he is asked about the meaning behind the collection, with press guessing everything from the importance of craftsmanship to the work of Matisse, he eventually offers: “it’s french,” after muttering, “it’s for you to decide.” And it could be true: There’s something deeply Parisian about all of the black, white, and red, combined with the sinuous, flowing textures that mimic tweeds. Someone else asks him if he enjoyed the process of putting the collection together. “No,” he says firmly. “All the time, process is suffering.”

Eventually, he shares that women’s bodies are his biggest inspiration. The tactile knits and the ultra-soft trains that trailed off the raised runway proved to be deeply feminine yet also worlds away from something modest or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, something obscene. Yamamoto has practiced it for years; much like the signature mussed, frazzled hair the models wear, created by hairstylist Eugene Souleiman, it’s become a total look.

Yamamoto may be a man of few words, but that’s really the beauty of his work: It speaks for itself.