The tremendous innovation of Japanese fashion designers who have revolutionized the way we think of fashion today will be shown for the first time in Seattle at SAM. The leading Japanese designers who initially gained recognition in the West were Kenzo Takada and Issey Miyake in the 1970s, but it is in the 1980s that Japanese designers emerged with an entirely new aesthetic. In the summer of 1983, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto launched a stark new aesthetic at the Paris runway shows. Based on monochrome black and white, they presented asymmetric and at times artfully perforated designs, which loosely skimmed the female silhouette. Recognized as a radical counterproposal to Western notions of the fitted gown, their designs gained instant notoriety.
Comme des Garçons, Spring/Summer 1997, Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, born 1942), Collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute. Photo by Takashi Hatakeyama.