Hello! Fashion: Kansai Yamamoto at the PMA
A lecture delivered October 25, 2008 at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, augmenting an article that appeared on Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof’s ARTBLOG.
Bodysuit, 1971. Photo
courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The
Hello Fashion! Kansai Yamamoto 1971-1973 show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
is hidden in the Costume and Textile Study Gallery on the 2nd floor of the
Perelman building. Yamamoto, a Japanese fashion designer known for his bold,
extravagant stylistics, can be described with the Japanese colloquial word hade,
meaning gaudy or something that stands out. He draws inspiration from Japanese
national culture and tradition, specifically Kabuki theater, kimono, art from
the Azuchi-Monoyama period (1568-1603) and marries it with Western (as in
Amero-European) cut-to-fit tailoring. He is perhaps best known for designing the
wardrobe for David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona, 1972-1973 (though none is on
display).
The
Philadelphia Museum is showing nine of Yamamoto’s pieces from a 1971-1973,
highlighting his sense of Japanese tradition and play in the materials and cut
of the pieces. The colors are bright, the silhouettes are sexy. Yamamoto once
said, "I am making happiness for people with my clothes. If you walk
through Central Park in them you create a 'wow.'"
Cape, bodysuit, clogs, chaps 1971. Photo
courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The
cape is covered with appliqués (cut-out decorations sewn or embroidered onto
the base textile) depicting popular Kabuki characters and an image of a
Japanese mask kite. The clogs, also known as okobo or geta, are traditional
sandals worn by apprentice geisha in the summer.
Clogs, photo courtesy of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art
A
New York Times article “Japanese Women: From ‘Geta’ to Platform Shoes” reports
on the incidental trend of platform shoes in 1974 Japan: “...that balancing skill
is now for sandals up to five inches thick and is as essential here to the
popular mini-length skirts as the geta are to the kimono.”
Playsuit with arm
guards, leg guards, and red felt hood (1973). Photo by K-Fai Steele.
The
hotpants playsuit is made from indigo printed cotton, a textile traditionally
used for yukata, the Japanese summer kimono. The red felt hood is inspired by
the traditional Japanese firefighter’s uniform, and flips up to reveal the
face. Yamamoto often drew upon easily identified work vestments traditional in
Japanese subcultures of conformity.
Japanese firefighter
hood, Edo period. Photo courtesy of Tokyo Fire Department.
Yamamoto’s collection debuted in the United States in 1971 at Hess’s in
Allentown, Pennsylvania when he was 27 years old. Hess’s donated the pieces to
the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1974.
Hess’s on Hamilton
Street 1897-1996. A bright, impressive Hess brothers marquee, once touted as
the largest retail sign outside of New York, lured customers through the door. Image
from Remembering Great American Department Stores.
Hess’s,
the “Hollywood on Hamilton,” was at the forefront of couture from the 1940s to
the late 1970s. Max Hess Jr. and later Irwin Greenburg (both Presidents and
CEOs) made a practice of sending buyers to Europe and Asia to report back on current
fashions. “We sent buyers all over the world to get the most unusual clothes
that people would never expect to see in Allentown, Pennsylvania” says
Greenberg, “the more extravagant the better. Something that everybody would
say, ‘Oh my god, who would wear it?’ Why did we do it? People would talk about
it.” It was a savvy marketing strategy. “We didn’t [sell couture items] to make
money, we made money on the ten dollar men’s shirts, but the imports were all
done to make the store an exciting place to shop.”
Hess’s
gained notoriety for selling items such as Yamamoto’s clothing and Rudy Gernreich’s
topless bathing suit, first modeled at Hess’s in 1964. (Hess’s didn’t sell a
single topless bathing suit, but their marketing department drafted a press
release stating that they had sold out, making national headlines).
Gernreich’s topless
bathing suit, 1964. Worn by Peggy Moffitt (Gernreich’s muse). Photo by William
Claxton.
Yvonne
Burbage was one of Hess’s buyers who went to Asia in 1973 and bought Yamamoto’s
designs along with pieces from 4 other designers (20 pieces total) for $7,000.
In a typed transcript between Burbage and Greenburg, Burbage says, “We’re
tired. These people drive me insane. It’s worse than Russia” and quickly goes
on to rave about Yamamoto, “We got nine pieces from Kansai. Exciting,
traditional Japanese, very up to date.”
Hess’s
often had community benefit fashion shows, and in September of 1971 advertised in
the Daily Intelligencer that Yamamoto’s pieces would be featured at Lenape Jr.
High School in Doylestown: “introducing the new layered look, tent and smock
fashions, the Oriental influence, and other trendsetters for fall and winter” (also
featured were designs by Yves St. Laurent and Christian Dior). In an April 1972
article in the Bucks County Courier Times, another fashion benefit for the PTA
in the Churchville school auditorium: “Boyish, bare and beautiful”. Burbage was
quoted in a 1973 press release for another fashion show featuring Yamamoto,
“More interesting, more excitingly feminine than I’ve seen in the past few
seasons in European fashion collections.”
Image from a Yamamoto
show held by Hess’s. Photo from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In
the PMA’s exhibit is a video of Yamamoto’s 1971 first international
Tokyo/London fashion show. It's quite theatrical and the influence of Kabuki theater
is obvious. The first model is wearing a large, red wig, which traditionally a
red lion deity’s character would wear:
Compared to this footage of white and
red, father and son lion deities:
Yamamoto
utilizes the device of kuroko, stagehands wearing all black to conduct
the models to walk forward, or begin spinning to show off a particular piece. They
also assist with hayagawari, or
quick costume change. Hikinuki or bukkaeri occurs
when costumes are layered over another and the stage hand pulls one off to
reveal another.
The
device of hayagawari, at 50 sec. from Yukinojo Henge in a short piece of
'Sagi Musume' 1959:
And in a
Disney live theater production, where one wouldn’t normally expect to see a
traditional kabuki element utilized (at 1 min 14 sec):
And even
closer to our own culture, hayagawari element used in performance on
America’s Got Talent:
The
1971 Tokyo/ London fashion show was where David Bowie first saw Yamamoto’s
work: “[Kansai] was half out of sci-fi rock and half out of Japanese theater.
The clothes were simply outrageous and nobody had seen anything like them
before… The clothes were the brainchild of Kansai Yamamoto. Extraordinary
designer… He contemporized the Japanese Kabuki and made it work for
rock’n’roll.”
The
Hello Fashion! show contrasts his designs to three of his contemporaries, Rei
Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto (no relation), highlighting Kansai
Yamamoto’s over-the-top stylistics. Their work tends to be much subtler,
expressing jimi quietude in the
wrapping and cloaking of the body.
Japan
fashion offered adaptability with the kimono which focused on layered cushioning
and abstract shaping, a garment that expanded beyond the human form and became
autonomous, increasing the primacy of textiles and patterns. One could say that
the Japanese didn’t focus their fashion entirely on sex and the body-penumbra
silhouette like the west had for centuries. In his 1995 article “Our Kimono
Mind: Reflections on Japanese Design: a Survey since 1950” Richard Martin
writes “Western culture has inhibited any thorough investigation of fashion’s
primary purposes.” Japanese design of the 70s and 80s offered a different
perspective on clothing to Western fashion, which traditionally associated
dress with specific times of day and activity (e.g., daywear is conservative,
eveningwear extravagant). Clothing is made-to-fit. “Japanese fashion educates
us to another approach to the body, beyond the sexual obsessions of the west.”
Kansai
Yamamoto is a somewhat controversial fashion figure in Japan precisely because
he embraced Japonism, updated it with cut-to-fit tailoring (and hotpants), and
packaged it wholesale to the west. He could almost be called the John Waters or
the Jeff Koons of Japanese fashion, exporting Japanese “vulgarity” to a world
who thinks of Japan as lantern festivals, bright colors, and kabuki costumes. Richard
Martin writes, “As in every previous Japonisme, the West has viewed elements of
Japan that are most traditional as radically new in their alternative to
Western convention and has perceived Japanese innovation and custom alive as an
iconoclastic vanguard.”
Yamamoto
is certainly a businessman: not only a fashion designer, he has also wrote
books, films, designed furniture, eyewear, dolls and doll dresses, even a Kansai
Barbie. He had fashion shows (“Super Shows”) on a Cirque du Soleil/Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony scale from 1993-1999. Video of these is on view in
the PMA Study Gallery, and should not be missed. In March of 2008, Toshiba
introduced a limited-edition luxury handset phone with custom-made cases
created in collaboration with Kansai Yamamoto. The phones sold for ¥399,000 or
$4,000USD.
The
Hello! Fashion show at the Philadelphia Museum illustrates Kansai Yamamoto’s
melding of Eastern and Western culture. He brings together traditional Japanese
garments with contemporary western idiomatics, elements of kabuki costume with
American hotpants. The following advertisement that Yamamoto was a spokesman
for seems to sum up his junction between East and West –Japanese theater and
coffee.
Nescafe Gold Blend ad,
1982.
Hello! Fashion: Kansai
Yamamoto, 1971–1973. Through Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, in the Perelman Building, 2nd floor Study Gallery. This article
will be augmented by a lecture given by K-Fai Steele at the Philadelphia
Institute for Advanced Study (www.PIFAS.net 1712 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia) on Saturday,
October 18, 2008 at 8:30PM.
K-Fai
Steele is an artist and edu-culturalist whose work can be seen at
www.K-FaiSteele.com.