Yohji Yamamoto

This book was one that I had bought from TKMAXX, this was supposed to be £24.99 and I had bought this for £8,99

I knew that Yohji Yamamoto was a fashion designer as I remember hearing a lyric from Gwen Stefani for Harajuku girls, this lyric being:
Wa mono - there's me, there's you (hoko-ten)In a pedestrian paradise
Where the catwalk got its claws (meow)
A subculture in a kaleidoscope of fashion
Prowl the streets of Harajuku (irasshaimase)
Super lovers, tell me where you got yours
(at the super lovers store)
Yohji Yamamoto, I'm hanging with the locals

After hearing it I always remembered that song and especially the lyrics, and when I saw this book in the shop I knew that I had to have this book! There was only two left and I'm so happy that I got my hands on one!

On the Taschen website and on the back of the book itself, it states: As one of the most mentally rigorous designers working in fashion, Yohji Yamamoto creates garments that can be intellectual—sometimes even difficult—yet always beautiful. Yohji’s free-spirited world is explored here via i-D magazine’s archives starting back in the 1980s, including his adoration for women and the female form, the painful process of creating anti-fashion through fashion and how his timeless utilitarian designs can be both avant-garde and classic at once.

This book is absolutely huge, the book is: Hardcover, quarter-bound, 11.7 x 16.5 in., 120 pages

Inside of the book it has thick fabricated images and then glossy images, and also text.

Within the first few pages, the book talks about Yohji.
'Yohji Yamamoto loves women. His passion is apparent in every collection he creates. He famously instructed the 'nose' who produced his first fragrance to "Please make a perfume for the designer that doesn't like perfume". I was so happy as flicking through the first few images, I saw GWEN STEFANI! I didn't believe it to be honest, and then I remembered that she sang about him in her song.

I really like this quote in the book: "Women are everything to me. I chose to work in fashion so that I could help protect women from many dangerous circumstances. My fashion is sometimes called armour, armour for life..." - Yohji Yamamoto.

"A feeling of safety and security soon leads to boredom. What has driven fashion through the ages is the way is plays with danger. To have something that hints at danger, something that confounds the conventional understanding of sexy: such wild and untamed elements are what make a garment alluring". - Yohji Yamamoto.

As said in another blog post that I am off to Japan in June and it would be very nice to go and visit a store that sells Yamamoto's clothing.