And the perfect way of expressing himself, apart from his music (Yamamoto is also a published musican) would be a book. It was 2002-3 when an editor friend in Shanghai asked me the favour to get her this book—-’Talking to Myself’ and it gave me the first opportunity of owning something Yohji Yamamoto, a piece of his mind too.

It was probably the most expensive book I have ever purchased. With a £99 price tag (£200 for the signed collectible version) the book itself is indeed a piece of art too. It has won the silver prize of Leipzig Book Fair. Each book was hand written with its own code while distributing.

Navy and black are Yamamoto’s favourite colours, unique. He explains, away from the colour distraction, it is much easier to focus on the construction. And this type of black, which is laid over navy, has more shades and secrets than a simple black.  His AW2010 collection shown here, played his best known colour combination the finest level.

At Barbican Art Centre’s recent Future Beauty exhibition, Yamamoto’s designs were taken the majority of attention. There’s something poetic about his work, same as this book.

The book combines 2 parts which contains his work, sketch, thoughts, quote…

The quote Mr.Yamamoto said in a video interview shown at Barbican Art Centre has somehow awaken me — ‘fashion is to design time’.

There were beautiful fine linen-paper-like material hanging off the ceiling to divide the space. The material is called MILIFE, a new non-woven product manufactured from a unique technology. It’s double-layer non-woven and it’s composed of 2 layers, each of which contains aligned MD filaments and aligned CD filaments.

It’s a great opportunity to actual experience a very close-up view to those masterpiece. Draping and folding are simply amazing.

Yohji Yamamoto’s cage corset – he’s mastered with playing black and black and black…as he explains, away from the colour distraction, it is much easier to focus on the construction.

It’s breath-taking to be so close-up to these carefully sculpted pieces, I’ve only seen them in art books before.

Below garment by Yohji Yamamoto was a collection inspired from the period after The Second World War, when people had no money and all clothes were illy fitted and misshaped. Yamamoto had taken the idea further and make the look somehow very poetic.

Below number is from Junya Wantanabe…thousands of pleats and ruffles in organdie…

These are from label Comme des Garçons , Rei Kawakubo has created them in the early 90s by understanding the space around the body. Oversized garments envelop rather than expose the female form. This set is from Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection (SS1997) featuring extreme, unconventional padding at the shoulders and hips, proved shocking to audiences at the time. Merce Cunningham was inspired by the collection to compose Scenario, a 1997 dance piece for which Kawakubo designed the costumes and stage set.

The exhibition is overall good because of all the show pieces, but however, being let down on a few parts. There was a cinematic room where people could sit down to watch a movie ‘interview with Yohji Yamamoto’. With its odd colour and Yamamoto’s younger face, the film is shot at least 15 years ago to my recognition. I sat in the dark for a good 30 mins at least wishing to catch the end, but still failed. Lots of imageries seemed just a show-off camera tricks with quite empty meanings and sometimes the interview voice was far too low and you could hardly hear anything. Then there were in between interview camera shots on top of the roof looking over Paris and Eiffel Towers in sun-set but sadly with Yamamoto’s voice only in Japanese and no english subtitles, which left all viewers very confusing. I think it was rather arsy than artistic.

The music filled the entire environment was a bit annoying too as it seems to be just some long quiet noises pretending to be the noise of people’s subconscious??! I thoroughly enjoyed all the exhibited garments and felt inspired on colours and especially the pattern-cuttings, which the Japanese are superb amazing skilled for.

Clockwise from top left—-Kenzo…Proenza Schoeler…Stella McCartney for Adidas—Alexander McQueen—Proenza Schouler—denim overall—Yohji Yamamoto(with hands)