The Final Push

>> I know I know... I shouldn't be repeat posting especially on an exhibition that has been open for a good few months and the probability is that those with a will to see it will have already done so. Still, I think every excellent exhibition deserves a final push and 'Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion' at the Barbican which is ending on the 6th February definitely necessitates another reminder shoved in your face.

To be fair my last mention of the exhibition was tacked onto an overview of a book that I had picked up at the exhibition store so it doesn't quite count. I was lucky enough to go back a second time with the kind permission from the Barbican to snap away so here I am back with an image flood to a) visually remind people as to why this exhibition is a must-see and b) to be a sort of poor man's substitutefor those that aren't able to visit the exhibition.

We may have come to take for granted the presence of Rei Kawakubo's empire and designers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake who are so entrenched into the Paris Fashion Week as well as in our minds as stalwart designers (which is probably why Yamamoto's near-bankrupcy came as such a shock...). It's easy to forget, and especially if you didn't live through it the first time round, the impact that their first shows in Paris had on fashion and big a game-changer their clothes really were. In a way, the exhibition seems to summarise that initial impact and gives us the chance to relive it again, which is a fortunate thing indeed considering I wasn't even born at the time of Kawakubo and Yamamoto's debut.

I'm dividing it up by designer but the exhibition begins with overarching themes seen in the work of the core Japanese designers that begins with Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garcons's early work such as this gathered linen dress from S/S 84 that showcases the way that she initially played with silhouette and the contrast between light and dark, that contrasted with her later work.

In particular I loved how the combination of Naoya Hatakeyama's photography of these Comme des Garcons' pieces laid flat along with the pieces themselves to show the contrast between Kawakubo's intuition for simultaneous simplicity and complexity.

By laying these foundations, Kawakubo can then allow herself to explore unexpected tangents such as this S/S 97 collection ridden with gingham and distorted body shapes...

Issey Miyake's famed fabric experimentations are well-documented in the exhibition tracking everything from the development of Pleats Please...

... to the now defunct A-POC, a way of presenting fully finished garments without any seams that are woven flat on computer-controlled looms.

The real treat of the exhibition was the ability to see pieces from collections that aren't up on Style.com and are hard to even get decent images of unless you go visit fashion school libraries... expemplified by this soft accordian pleat-filled A/W 00-1 collection by Junya Watanabe...

There were also unexpected pieces that showed up such as this sky blue kimono by Yohji Yamamoto from his S/S 95 collection - it was intended to be worn in a non-traditional way as an open robe which appeals to my own way with warping kimono-wearing.

From his A/W 97-98 collection though you have a more romantic and perhaps my favourite aspect of Yamamoto's work exemplified by this black and grey wool herringbone jacket and skirt...

... as well as this S/S 98 twisted gown that is indicative of the way he tried to extract an essence all those old photographs that he loved looking at, as seen in Wim Wenders' documentary about Yamamoto.

Seeing Tao Kurihara's early work was a real treat, particularly the S/S 97 paper-filled collection... if I was diligent enough, I would have sat there with reams of paper trying to figure out how to fold it into something that even remotely resembled this skirt...

I'm quite chuffed that I still have wear the knitted shorts that I bought at the Dover Street Market sample sale, from Tao's first collection and it's with this in mind that I'm going to attempt to own the rest of it, some way, some how...

I suppose the visual piece de resistance of the exhibition has to be this four walled display of Undercover's A/W 00-01 collection, again another collection which is a bitch to find pictures of online. The plethora of ideas as well that seem to have filtered down from this collection into other more recent collections of other designers seem to be endless...

In the section devoted to a new generation of designers, I was most taken by Akira Naka's gradiated wool cable knit jacket but it seems Naka hasn't designed a more recent collection than this A/W 09 one...

In addition, the printed matter of the core designers showcased in the exhibition as well as video footage of shows and documentary form an integral part of Future Beauty which for a brand like Comme des Garcons also demonstrates how much of a universe it has become today, beyond the clothes they show.