2011/03/27
Rei Kawakubo's works were featured at the "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. (Provided by Colin Roy)
Motorbike gang and construction worker clothing on display at the "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York (Makiko Takahashi)
An exhibition of Yoji Yamamoto works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Makiko Takahashi)
Thirty years after Japanese clothes designers like Issey Miyake first gained global prominence, international exhibitions are putting the spotlight on the country's distinctive contribution to international fashion.
The "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition currently showing in Munich, Germany, has just finished a run at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, where it attracted about 35,000 visitors.
The exhibition in London, which closed in early February, was spread over two floors at the Barbican and caught many people's imagination with its diaphanous interior design, presenting garments behind transparent curtains made of white cotton gauze suspended from a vaulted ceiling.
But at the heart of the exhibition are 120 garments by prominent Japanese designers owned by the Kyoto Costume Institute.
The "In Praise of Shadows" section features early works by Rei Kawakubo, Yoji Yamamoto and other designers known for their use of blacks in often unconventional designs.
The "Flatness" section focuses on Issey Miyake and other pioneering designers' exploration of two-dimensionality.
"Tradition and Innovation" explores how Japanese techniques and materials had informed designs by Junya Watanabe, Mintdesigns and others, and the "Cool Japan" section looks at fashion styles influenced by comic books, videogames and other aspects of contemporary Japanese popular culture.
One gallery-goer in London, a lawyer, said the simplicity of the designs had been striking. Every detail and each material used in the clothes seemed to have a meaning, the visitor said.
Akiko Fukai, chief curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute, said the exhibition reflected the institutional strength and diversity of the Japanese fashion world today.
The exhibition was co-curated by Kate Bush, curator of the Barbican Art Gallery, who stressed Japanese fashion's highly original abstract and intellectual approach, as well its distinctive sense of color and shape.
The "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition's six-month run at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) museum in New York will finish in April. It features works from the 1970s and 1980s by Miyake and other renowned designers including Kenzo Takada and Mitsuhiro Matsuda.
There are also displays of street fashion including Lolita, Gothic punk and Gothic-Lolita styles, as well as "oendan" (all-male cheering squad), outrageously embroidered "bosozoku" (motorbike gang) clothing, "Akiba-kei" styles, school uniforms and "mori girl" fashion.
Valerie Steele, who put the event together, said Japanese fashion was notably fast-moving and also interesting because of its lack of engagement in political and social issues.
The "Yoji Yamamoto at the V&A" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London runs until July 10.
About 80 garments are on display, 20 of which have been placed among other artifacts throughout the museum.
Curator Ligaya Salazar said Yamamoto's garments had changed the Western concept of garment making with their distinctive colors, shapes, materials, durability, and crossing of traditional gender lines.
At this year's Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and other leading fashion brands also presented works inspired by Japanese culture and style.
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