Culture Shock In Fashion Industry

After the economic recession and depression of the 1970s, the global economy was in rapid development in the 1980s, people were paying more attention to material life, and also materialism has become the center of life. As in women’s wear at that time, successful women's look was ‘the focus point’ of fashion, expressing their own personality, aggressive and sexy, bright color and exaggerating pattern was also a big point of 80s fashion. Meanwhile, when power dressing was taking over the fashion of the earlier 1980s, few Japanese designers began to present their collection in Western, shapelessness and reduction, with a touch of black, asymmetric, deconstructed, artfully ripped, and unraveled garments, showing their different perspective of fashion, brought a Culture shock to Western Fashion Industry. I will focus my discussion on the big three Japanese designers are Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo also well known for her brand Comme des Garcons. Two features are playing a really important role to understand their design at that time, which are ‘MA’ and 'Wabi Sabi'. ‘MA’ is the influence of the Japanese traditional apparel 'Kimono', also mean that the interspace between wearer and garment. ‘Wabi’ means that without decoration or visible luxury and ‘Sabi’ is about old and atmospheric as 'Wabi Sabi' means that the beauty of the imperfect, the asymmetric, and the incomplete.

Issey Miyake was studied graphics design in Japan and further his fashion design study with the Ecola de la Chambre in haute couture, having his first collection in New York. He was born in Hiroshima, when he was seven, he personally experienced the threat of war and the atom bomb, lost most of his family and his mother was in serious burned also passed away when he was ten. This childhood experienced had to make Issey Miyake determined to invest in the field of ' The design that will not be destroyed'. Since his debuts in the 1970s, he started to create clothes by making the fabric, and in 1988, he experiments with pleating while using ultra-light polyester through modern technology. He was popular at his ‘A-POC’ and his ‘pleat please’ series. While in the 1990s, he found himself deviated from his first dream as he thinks his design was too heavy and far away from the people. He decided to really think about how his design going to make, wash, and also trying to keep the price down. After in 1993, his ‘pleat please’ line was out, with totally machine washable, also preserve the elasticity and made them very easy to wear. He said once: ‘To me, the design must get into real life. Otherwise, it’s just couture, it’s just extravaganza.’(Future) Also in 1999, his ‘A-POC’ lines which mean ‘a a piece of cloth’ was out and he was decided to develop a weaving process that produced fully finished garments without sewing needed. Basically, ‘A-POC’ design is mean that the entire outfit will be cut out by the wearer themselves by offering guidelines from the designer but also created their own style. At that time, western clothing design was to pursue the exaggerated body lines without paying any attention to the functionality of clothing, but he had given a new value of clothing functions and designed a new concept of clothing that was comfortable, also respected the wearer's personality, and given the maximum freedom to the human body. His originality has gone far beyond the boundaries of the times and fashion, showing his extraordinary understanding of the times.

Yohji Yamamoto was studied for a law degree before he studied fashion at Bunka Fashion College, his outstanding talent in fashion make him able to get the scholarships to further his study in Paris in 1968. The climate changes of Japan after World War II had developed his incredible achievement in the fashion industry which women had to work for earning their household at that time in Japan. Yohji’s father was counted as dead as they haven’t heard from him since he participated in the Second World War, his mother was working as a seamstress and have their shop opened nearby the red-light district in Tokyo. In 1960, he started to work with his mother, after his contact with his customer who working as a prostitute, he has shown his loathe to those raddled and phony women. In contrast, his independent mother has become a noble image in his young heart, as you can see in his design, banned of high-heel, preference of black and also advocated of envelopes body rather than revealed it, are all related to his growth experience. Yohji Yamamoto builds up his anti-fashion empire in the west with his unique black design and taking inspiration from the beauty of Japanese traditional clothing, break free from the inherency of tight-fitting and the revealing of body trends in western design, created the image of the woman that he had in his mind.

Rei kawakubo was graduated in her fine art and literature studies and working as a stylist, she started designing clothes as she found is unable to find the garments she wants for herself. She established Comme des Garcons in Tokyo in 1973 and had her first overseas fashion show in Paris with Yohji Yamamoto in 1981. Her design and styles are well known as ‘deconstructionism’, which contains stitching, holes, unfinished garment, and asymmetric element. When almost all designers were still making use of a woman’s body at that time in western fashion, Rei kawakubo insists on her design philosophy, using ragged clothing and disheveled hair for her model, and even understood as ‘The revenge from Hiroshima’. Her design goes beyond fashion designing and it is comparable to an artistic belief. Her creative concept is between two dimension and three dimension spaces, which is challenging and disruptive performance art. In her collection ‘Body meets Dress, Dress meets Body’, she created a garment with sewn-in pockets which removable pads had moved all over the body to the ‘unexpected’ places, she also challenging Western beauty by using oversize garment, asymmetric garment, and layering garment to women body at that time.

After Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo have their first show in Paris in 1981, they have received a big amount of criticism, even from magazines and newspapers. Their design was criticized as ‘post-nuclear rag-picker fashion’, ‘apocalyptic end-of-the-world fashion’, ‘Japanese rag lady look’, and also ‘Hiroshima chic’. In the contrast to the glamorous western fashion trends at that time, the shapeless, sexless and colorless design that their purposefully to be ugly was on the contrary. Even though they received a lot of humiliation, but within a year, western designers were starting to use the rags with holes in their garments.

In my opinion, childhood and growth experiences always have an indelible impact and influence on an artist's style. The cultural shock that had brought into western fashion at that time from Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei kawakuba are undeniable, they did not shrink back even received all the insulted and humiliation from people, also insisted in their original intention, they brought a whole new level of perspective to the western designer and opened their eyes greatly with the aesthetic of Eastern fashion. By promoting deconstruction in their fashion, also has a great influence on the fashion designing of after generation such as Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, and Dries van Noten. I think, as an Asian myself, researching through what they have been experienced, bringing eastern beauty to western, very motivated me but inevitable sadness. What if they didn’t take the risk to step forward into the West and what it will happen to the fashion industry? I think is unable to found the answers.