Yohji Yamamoto | Exhibition

with Coralie Gauthier at the V&A and Wapping Projects and Magda Keaney at Fashion Space Gallery

This installation-based retrospective of Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto was his first major solo show in the UK and showcased over 80 women's and menswear garments at the V&A and elaborated on his wider influence through three accompanying exhibitions at Wapping Projects and Fashion Space Gallery.

Yohji Yamamoto became internationally renowned as a fashion designer in the early eighties for challenging traditional notions of fashion by designing garments that seemed oversized, unfinished, played with ideas of gender or fabrics not normally used in fashionable attire such as felt or neoprene. Other works revealed Yamamoto's unusual pattern cutting, knowledge of fashion history and sense of humour. His work is characterised by a frequent and skilful use of black, a colour which he describes as 'modest and arrogant at the same time'.

Central to Yohji Yamamoto’s work are the textiles. ‘Fabric’ he said once ‘is everything’. Each one of the fabrics used in his collections are made to his specifications by different craftspeople in and around Kyoto in Japan.