To Yohji Yamamoto, the dress maker, failure is important. ‘Failure makes strong motivation for next collection.’

Yamamoto speaks good English, but not perfect English, hence the sentence above being incorrect grammatically.

Yamamoto believes that if he believes a collection is a success, then that is not good (the contrary nature of the man surfaces). If this happens, then he believes he has lost his way ‘and you need to come back to yourself for a long time.’

Yamamoto reckons ‘we need education about beauty.’

BDW

The talk was good, so I have added some more nuggets of the ‘in conversation’ I heard between Frances Corner and Yohji Yamamoto at the V and A.

More thoughts from Yamamoto on fast fashion: he is all about designing clothes now that can be worn with clothes from past collections (you can see the timeless quality emerging).

Yamamoto has an innate belief in fabric, and listening to what the fabric has to say.

Tailoring, to Yamamoto, is craftsmanship.

Yamamoto believes in the ‘life button’: the button that is central to a jacket/garment, the button that the garment literally hangs from.

Yamamoto has a thing about sleeves. The human body dictates that the sleeve hole needs to angle forward, to follow the natural fall of the arm.

Yamamoto also has a thing about pockets on breasts, particularly women’s breasts. You can place a pocket high on the mountain, you can place a pocket at the foot of the mountain, but to place a pocket on the mountain is not really his thing.

BDW