Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto (山本 耀司, Yamamoto Yōji, born 3 October 1943) is a Japanese fashion designer. Since 1972, he has produced seasonal collections across several diffusion lines, including his main line Yohji Yamamoto, which he has showcased at Paris Fashion Week since 1984.

Early life

1940s

In 1943, Yamamoto was born to Fumio and Fumi Yamamoto in Tokyo, Japan. Working as a food wholesaler to department stores, his father was drafted to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army in 1944, while Yamamoto was only 10 months old. A few months later, his father was reported to have been killed in action at a 'pitched battle' in Luzon, Philippines. After the war ended, his mother enrolled into Bunka Fashion College to learn dressmaking, with Yamamoto living with his mother's relatives in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture in the meantime. Eventually, Yamamoto and his mother returned to Tokyo, with Yumi Yamamoto opening a dressmaking shop, Fumi Yosoten, across the street from Shinjuku Koma Theater in Kabukicho, Tokyo.

1950s

Growing up in post-war Kabukicho, Yamamoto was exposed at a young age to the roughness of Yakuza-controlled entertainment districts, cultivating a 'spirit or burai, or outlaw' in his youth. In its local theatres, he discovered his love for cinema, especially American Westerns. Until the age of 11, he was enrolled in Okubo Elementary School, learning Judo at the then-called Yodobashi Police Station, now Shinjuku Police Station, to defend himself against school bullies.

In 1955, Yamamoto passed the admission exam to enter Gyosei Elementary School at the age of 12. A prestigious Catholic school in Kudan, Tokyo, he met Goichi Hayashi as a sixth-grade classmate, with whom he would later co-found Y's Company Ltd in 1977.

1960s

In 1962, Yamamoto enrolled into Keio University, at the Hiyoshi campus in Kanagawa, as an undergraduate with the faculty of law. Despite an initial ambition to become a prosecutor, he quickly became disillusioned with the lifestyle of a law student and took to travelling Europe for several months in his later years of university. Beginning with a boat ride to Nakhodka, Russia, he visited the Soviet cities of Khabarovsk and Moscow before a trip to the Netherlands and Germany. Afterwards, he took the train to Paris, France and later the city of Marseille before a month-long cruise back to Yokohama, Japan, with stops in cities such as Mumbai, India and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

In 1966, Yamamoto graduated from Keio University with an undergraduate degree in law. Reluctant to seek employment in an established company like most of his university peers, he asked to assist his mother in her dressmaking shop. Despite her initial reservations, she later encouraged him to enroll into Bunka Fashion College to learn dressmaking that same year, where he met his first wife, Toshiko Ota. In his second year, he joined the design course whose alumni included the likes of Kenzo Takada and Mitsuhiro Matsuda, having struggled with the sewing course the year before.

In 1969, Yamamoto was selected for the Soen Award, an annual prize for upcoming designers by Soen Magazine, having won an honourable mention with an A-line white and grey wool dress at the previous round in 1968. Judged by senior fashion designers such as Nobuo Nakamura and Junko Koshino, the initial pool of 8416 submissions was shortlisted to 30 for actual production. Presenting a coat dress in grey chinchilla and white double georgette, sewed by a seamstress from his mother's shop, Yamamoto also won the Endo Award, a school prize for design with a bonus prize of round-trip airline tickets to Paris.

In that same year, Yamamoto graduated from Bunka Fashion College with an undergraduate degree in fashion design. Using his round-trip airline tickets won from the Endo Award, he travelled to Paris to live and study fashion for a year, staying in an apartment near Odeon Theatre in the Rive Gauche. However, in what he described later as the "worst humiliation" of his life, Yamamoto struggled to find work at major fashion publications such as Vogue and Marie Claire in Paris, having his haute-couture sketches either rejected or returned to him. While sitting at Les Deux Magots, a famous cafe along the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, he experienced a particular moment of despair and hopelessness while studying the local Parisians, dressed in the latest pret-a-porter designs by French designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin, entering and exiting the cafe.

Returning to his wife and young son in Tokyo, Yamamoto assisted his mother with couture orders at their dressmaking shop in Kabukicho. He also worked as a fashion advisor for Yoshinotoh, a textile wholesaler in Horidome, drawing fashion designs a few days a week. Over the next two years, Yamamoto grew dissatisfied with fulfilling couture orders for female customers, ranging from bar hostesses to housewives, whom he felt were commissioning and wearing clothes that were impractical, tight-fitting and to be worn mainly for the pleasure of men, leading to his idea of masculine clothes for women in response and the opening of Y's soon afterwards.

Career

1970s

In 1972, Yamamoto launched his first company, Y’s Company Ltd. With capital raised from Yoshinotoh and sales from his mother's dressmaking shop, he founded the company with Goichi Hayashi, an old friend from Gyosei Elementary School. Beginning with a large, "dull-coloured gabardine" coat and an understated approach to branding, the business was marketed in speciality boutiques and department stores but struggled to collect orders at first. However, a breakthrough soon came with a new line of raincoats, produced in a "water-repellent Swiss-made fabric" and exhibited in several colours at a local speciality store.

In 1977, five years later, Yamamoto staged his first fashion show in Bell Commons, a department store in Aoyama, Tokyo. Presenting a new collection of "colorless, wrinkled, blocky clothes" in uncommon materials such as recycled blankets, the show gave the brand a much-needed boost in attention and sales. With special features in Japanese magazines such as An An and Ryuko Tsushin, the company was soon able to relocate from its Kabukicho store to Minami Aoyama, and later to a head office and warehouse in Nishi Azabu.

1980s

By 1980, Yamamoto had expanded Y's annual sales to "between 3 billion to 5 billion yen", with nationwide distribution and over one hundred employees. presenting a menswear collection for women. Now interested in returning to Paris, Yamamoto sent Atsuro Tayama, a close employee, to scout the city for real estate and to set-up a local subsidiary. Located along the Rue de Seine, near the Forum des Halles, the subsidiary had to be registered as Yohji Yamamoto, due to French trademark laws against the simplicity of Y's as a brand name, and the store was opened in April 1981 with inventory imported from Japan., followed by an unannounced prêt-à-porter show to publicise the new collection.

Eschewing any familiar codes of Japanese fashion for Western-style garments, Yamamoto presented a radical collection of asymmetrical, loose-fitting clothes cut in black fabric, made of urethane and vinyl. Called the "Shock of Black" by the Parisian fashion media, the show coincided by chance with Rei Kawakubo's debut show for Comme Des Garçons in Paris, and both were received together with a mixed critical reception for their challenge to Western ideals of fashion and beauty. In spite of its divisive reaction, the Paris debut show, and a subsequent New York show in the same year, were the beginning of commercial success for the brand overseas, seeing a great surge in commercial orders and press interest by the end of 1981.

In 1984, Yamamoto commissioned the Japanese architect, Shigeru Uchida, to manage and build his four-storey flagship store in Minami Aoyama, Tokyo. Selecting a quiet location without an existing luxury presence, Yamamoto took inspiration from the first store along Rue du Jour in Les Halles by French designer, Agnès Troublé, otherwise known as agnès b., in the cultivation of a relaxed and hands-off presentation of products and staff. That same year, Y’s Company Ltd. was renamed to Yohji Yamamoto Inc. in Japan.

2000s

During the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, Yamamoto saw Yohji Yamamoto Inc. suffer from an estimated debt of 6 billion yen, due to an overexpansion of its retail and wholesale businesses in Europe and Asia as well as production facilities in Italy in the early 2000s. Following the contractionary effects of the 2008 financial crisis on consumer spending and the increased demand for cheaper alternatives by fast fashion brands, Yamamoto applied for bankruptcy protection for Yohji Yamamoto Inc., under Japan's Civil Rehabilitation Law, in 2009, preceding an agreement by Integral Corporation, a Japanese investment fund, to bailout the company in exchange for majority ownership.

In 2009, sales of Yohji Yamamoto Inc. had fallen from 12 billion yen to 7 billion yen, with staff reduced from 500 to 300 employees and flagship stores in New York and Antewrp and outlets worldwide shuttered to lower costs.

Collections

Yohji Yamamoto

Title	Season	Date	Location	Looks	Notes
Untitled	F/W 2025-2026	7 March 2025	Salons de l’Hotel De Vill, Paris	43
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Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME

Title	Season	Date	Location	Looks	Notes
Untitled	F/W 2025-2026	23 January 2025	Salons de l’Hotel De Vill, Paris	37
Untitled	S/S 2025-2026	20 June 2024	Yohji Yamamoto Headquarters, Paris	37
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