A piece shown in Paris in the autumn of 1982. (Photo courtesy of Yohji Yamamoto)

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The Shock of Black: Yohji Yamamoto (16)

Radical designs provoke debate and shake the fashion industry

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As I was preparing for my prêt-à-porter debut in Paris in April 1981, I decided to ensure that the collection would be devoid of any taste or flavor of Japanese culture. I was determined not to use any element Japanese fashion designers tended to use casually in their clothes, such as straight-line cutting and kimono patterns.

A "nonconformist," I was loath to do anything designed to go down well with foreigners. I only used European-style structural designs and cuts, adopting vinyl and urethane as their materials.

Since I had not yet built a working relationship with overseas media nor issued any media announcement about my Paris debut, I did not expect my show to attract a large audience. But some buyers dropped in to see the collection. One of them was Barbara Weiser, the daughter of Selma Weiser, who founded Charivari, a fashion boutique in New York. She told me that Comme des Garçons' Rei Kawakubo was also staging a show at a different venue in Paris.

The news surprised me and lifted my spirits.

My guess is that Kawakubo made a sudden decision to debut her collection in Paris and staged her show with a flurry of activity. It was a coincidence that Kawakubo and I burst onto the Paris fashion scene at the same time, but our unintentionally synchronized foray into the French capital had a huge impact on the world of fashion. Our collections attracted a lot of media attention.

As we staged more shows, the buzz grew louder.

Black, holes and asymmetric cuts... We created and presented fashion designs that defied these taboos in Western clothes-making and challenged, in a uniquely experimental way, traditional notions of beauty within fashion. Our radical designs provoked a fierce debate on what was described as the "Shock of Black" and shook the fashion community to its core.

I had no intention to fight them. It is true that I felt "humiliation" and "a sense of powerlessness" while I was staying in Paris after graduating from Bunka Fashion College. However, I only wanted to make loosely designed garments since I was a bit tired of creating highly refined clothes.

I just thought clothes created with this approach would look cooler. I detected a change in my aesthetic sense, not in the fashion trend.

Initially, most media reacted negatively to our design proposals. Our clothes were ridiculed as evoking a "beggar look" or a "shabby look." Some expressed a strong disgust by calling us "yellow peril." One bitterly critical article was accompanied by a photo showing works of mine and those of Kawakubo with a large X mark superimposed and titled "Good bye."

These expressions of hatred toward our collections probably reflected the perception that the Japanese fashion designers were challenging traditional Western aesthetics in an aggressively sacrilegious manner.

As I look back on those days, I think these negative reactions also reflected hostile feelings toward Japanese economy, marked by the aggressive expansion of Japanese companies into U.S. and European markets, a wave of acquisitions of Western companies and properties by Japanese investors and the closed nature of the Japanese domestic market. Critics focused solely on differences between our approaches and traditional Western fashion designs and labeled our collections "la mode Japonaise."

But some positive comments started appearing in global media, especially among liberal newspapers like Libération. A growing number of articles praised our designs, saying we had the feeling of zen and offered a new manner of wearing clothes. These comments inspired and encouraged us a lot.

The fashion community was fiercely divided on how to evaluate our clothes. But it is probably better to be criticized than to be totally ignored by the media. When Kawakubo and I made our debut in Paris, the fashion scene was dominated by designs featuring bold colors, cinched waists and shoulder pads — trends often associated with such designers as Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana. But fashion trends change with the times. The world of fashion gradually became tired of such designs and was beginning to look for new styles and new talents.

It was in that transition period that Kawakubo and I entered the Paris fashion scene. The new trend we generated gained traction quickly. Buyers and journalists began to throng our shows and exhibits.