Japanese Fashion Designers

Over the past 40 years, Japanese designers have led the way in aligning fashion with art and ideology, as well as addressing identity and social politics through dress. They have demonstrated that both creative and commercial enterprise is possible in today's international fashion industry, and have refused to compromise their ideals, remaining autonomous and independent in their design, business affairs and distribution methods. The inspirational Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo have gained worldwide respect and admiration and have influenced a generation of designers and artists alike. Based on twelve years of research, this book provides a richly detailed and uniquely comprehensive view of the work of these three key designers. It outlines their major contributions and the subsequent impact that their work has had upon the next generation of fashion and textile designers around the world. Designers discussed include: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Naoki Takizawa, Dai Fujiwara, Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara, Jun Takahashi, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Junichi Arai, Reiko Sudo & the Nuno Corporation, Makiko Minagawa, Hiroshi Matsushita, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Helmut Lang.

Paris is renowned as the greatest fashion capital in the world. It has a rigid and tightly controlled system that non-western designers have difficulty penetrating. Yet a number of the most influential Japanese designers have broken into this scene and made a major impact. How? Kawamura shows how French fashion has been both disturbed and strengthened by the addition of "outside" forces such as Kenzo Takada, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, and Hanae Mori. She considers many other key questions the fashion industry should be asking itself. Does the system facilitate or inhibit creativity? Has it become preoccupied with the commercial projection of "product images" rather than with the clothing itself? And what direction will French fashion take without Saint Laurent, Miyake and Kenzo? This is the first in-depth study of the Japanese revolution in Paris fashion and raises provocative questions for the future of the industry.

The story of how Japan adopted and ultimately revived traditional American fashion Look closely at any typically "American" article of clothing these days, and you may be surprised to see a Japanese label inside. From high-end denim to oxford button-downs, Japanese designers have taken the classic American look—known as ametora, or "American traditional"—and turned it into a huge business for companies like Uniqlo, Kamakura Shirts, Evisu, and Kapital. This phenomenon is part of a long dialogue between Japanese and American fashion; in fact, many of the basic items and traditions of the modern American wardrobe are alive and well today thanks to the stewardship of Japanese consumers and fashion cognoscenti, who ritualized and preserved these American styles during periods when they were out of vogue in their native land. In Ametora, cultural historian W. David Marx traces the Japanese assimilation of American fashion over the past hundred and fifty years, showing how Japanese trendsetters and entrepreneurs mimicked, adapted, imported, and ultimately perfected American style, dramatically reshaping not only Japan's culture but also our own in the process.

Offers a survey of modern fashion in Japan over the last three decades and the designers behind them.

Japanese Fashion examines the entire sweep of Japanese clothing history, from the sophisticated fashion systems of late-Edo period kimonos to the present day, providing possible theories of how Japan made this fashion journey and linking current theories of fashion to the Japanese example. The book is unique in that it provides the first full history of the last 200 years of Japanese clothing. It is also the first book to include Asian fashion as part of global fashion as well as fashion theory. It adds a hitherto absent continuity to the understanding of historical and current fashion in Japan, and is pioneering in offering possible theories to account for that entire history. By providing an analysis of how that entire history changes our understanding of the way fashion works, this book will be an essential text for all students of fashion and design.

With essays, this book looks at how the world of fashion has been transformed by contemporary Japanese visual culture.--[book cover].

This book offers a unique opportunity to discover Yamamoto's philosophy as a man as well as a fashion designer, illustrating points in his life by means of story, verse and his own sketches. It includes a philosophical essay, exploring the 'Japanese elements in Yohji Yamamoto'.

The first book on the work of Tsumori Chisato, a fashion designer who has gained a cult following for her uncanny ability to create clothes with a manga-bohemian charm. Tsumori Chisato scaled the commanding heights of Japanese and international fashion in the 1990s with color as the critical virtue. Reacting to the somber minimalism that is even now conjured by any mention of “serious” Japanese fashion in the West, this new world is playful, unabashedly romantic in its femininity, and awash in vivid color. By turns streetwise and homespun, Tsumori’s latest collections eloquently convey the maturation of a style, one that has grown since her days of apprenticing with Issey Miyake and designing for the highly successful Issey Sport Line. Most recently applauded for a stylistic and thematic repertoire that has drawn upon Nordic, nautical, and 1970s style, her collections occupy an interstice between function and gesture. Conceived as the first comprehensive document of Tsumori Chisato’s work, this book opens a door to her inner life and aspirations, giving readers a one-way ticket to destinations that exist only in Tsumori’s mind. Visually stunning, this book is filled with dozens of the designer’s signature illustrations and sketches, playful anecdotes, and essays by fashion critics and curators, perfectly capturing Tsumori’s brilliant balance of fantasy and reality.