What is fashion? What can we do with fashion?
Fashion designer Yoshikazu Yamagata, works to emotionally expand the concept of fashion and tackling big questions like those above. He stirred controversy with his collections at Japan Fashion Week, including “The Everyone’s New Clothes” which questioned what fashion was about, ”Graduate Fashion Show 0′ Point”, which showcased the strength of starting from zero in fashion and “The Fashion Show of The Gods”, his Spring/Summer 2010 collection, which examined the origins of creation, presented in October 2009.

We interviewed the man, who also started a new educational hub called “coconogacco” last year, to foster young creative talents.

I think your approach to the many possibilities of fashion is quite individualistic. When and how did you start to come up with your ideas for fashion?

I got interested in fashion from a young age, from when I was dressing myself up as I was a teen. A lot of questions like, ‘what is the definition of fashion?’ came to my head. In those days, I came across books written by Kiyokazu Washida, which inspired me to answer such questions. I’ve realised that the definition of fashion is ambiguous, but one thing I can clearly say is that fashion isn’t just about the garment itself. We can start to grasp the real meaning of fashion through this, combined with the social element of how it mirrors popular fads, for example.

Through consumption and economic patterns, what seems to draw public attention in fashion these days is ‘fast fashion’. And in the latest collection “The Fashion Show of The Gods”, you took that concept of ‘fast fashion’ and presented a collection of ‘fast clothes’. Could you tell us about “The Fashion Show of The Gods”?

Since the beginning, my collections have always been concerned with going back to the most basic point of creation, zero. In exploring the origins of creation, the idea that the “Creator=God” came to my mind. With that, I got inspired by thinking about what the Creator would wear, which further led me to question, “What if gods were doing fashion shows?”, and I proceeded from there.

In the process of creation, what do you concentrate on the most? Please tell us about your points of focus.

Most importantly, I focus on originality and creation. It’s difficult to understand the creativity behind “The Fashion Show of The Gods” unless you approach it from an unconventional point of view. I’ve been told that draping someone in cloth isn’t that creative, since it’s been done for thousands of years now. But through that, I got the idea that no one thought to wrap just an entire roll of cloth (measuring roughly 10.6m by 30cm) around each model before. And nobody had ever thought to push the idea far enough to dress them up like gods that way, and then fashion sceptres from scrap cardboard for them.

You made a work of bras called “A LONG STORY” when you were at Central Saint Martins.

I made it during my temporary absence from school after the second year. It was a collection of 8 people wearing each different clothes in a remote village. I designed for this collection with some stories in mind, such as that of a witch, homeless people and a country girl aiming to be a fashion designer. Through drawing inspiration from the image of the girl, I came up with a design process for the finished product. For me, it can be easier to come up with images by thinking about stories first. For this, the story was about a mischievous boy stealing clothes from a big monster who lives near a remote forest. Later, the boy steals bras, with a pink piglet who accompanies him afterwards. I first consider the overarching story, the setting and then finally, the design of the clothes.

Please tell us about the focus of the ‘original’ fashion studies offered at “coconogacco”.

Last year, I started to think about creating an unconventional learning place. I wanted to create a place where, in my own special way, I could work on collaborating with students to create something. For example, we sometimes switch between the roles of teachers and students, as I wanted to change the traditional relationship between teachers and students. We have to show that teachers are not always right, and young people can also have right answers. The significance of the project is to express such an idea.

What aspect of fashion do you see yourself concerned with in the near future?

Fashion itself. Just what can I do with fashion?
Since fashion is natural and necessary to our lives, it is my personal mission to go back to the basics once more and try to discover fashion’s true meaning and power. Until the 20th century, fashion was very important in influencing social standing. But fashion has now ‘flattened out’, and we can freely wear anything we want without prejudices or difficulties. So I am interested in the myriad possibilities of future fashion and I’d like to work on that somehow.

Yoshikazu Yamagata
A fashion designer for fashion brand “writtenafterwords“, established after graduating from Central Saint Martins and working as an assistant to John Galliano. He believes that while fashion is shedding its classes and boundaries in a rapidly capitalistic world, designers remain too grounded to keep up with the times. With this in mind, he designs fashion that also considers the effects of cultural and social phenomena, coupled with humour and a narrative element.

If you’d like to explore more about Yoshikazu Yamagata, please read the full version of interview at SHIFT magazine!

Text: mina
Translation: Akihiko Hamada

Tags: capital, clothes, Design, japanese fashion, japn, Style, Tokyo