Contrary to popular belief, clothes are not practical and dress is not necessary. Thomas Carlyle’s Professor Teufelsdröckh told us in the mid-nineteenth century that ‘The first purpose of clothes was not warmth or decency, but ornament… among wild people we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes’, and he found resonance with a certain supercilious feline in Meji Japan, Natsume Sōseki’s nameless narrator in his novel I Am a Cat who mused that ‘human history is not the history of flesh and bone and blood, but a mere chronicle of costumes’.
Opening next month at The Barbican in London is Future Beauty, a major survey of avant-garde Japanese fashion from the last 30 years, curated by fashion historian and Kyoto Costume Institute Director, Akiko Fukai. Organised around four themes – blackness and shadows; flatness and form; tradition and innovation; street style and popular culture – the exhibition will explore the unique sensibilities of Japanese fashion since the early 1980s when Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto proposed a radically new fashion aesthetic.
Emerging from Japan’s post-war economic and industrial boom, Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto emphasized playfulness, textile innovation, sculptural volume and freedom of movement – defying the bright, body-conscious glamour of the lycra-loving early eighties and often referring back to Japan’s rich visual heritage. Their works will be presented alongside their successors including Comme des Garçons protégé Junya Watanabe, as well as Jun Takahashi of UnderCover, Final Home by Kosuke Tsmura, Tao Kurihara, Matohu, Akira Naka and mintdesigns…
