Who is Yohji Yamamoto? History of the avant-garde designer who will collaborate with Supreme

On Monday, Supreme officially announced the imminent release of its next collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto. The Japanese designer joins the host of cult designers who have collaborated with Supreme in recent years and which already includes Jean-Paul Gaultier, Nigo and Jun Takahashi. Of all these designers, however, Yamamoto is the least commercially famous, at least relative to more mainstream fashion: what is best known among the younger generations is the Y-3 line co-produced with adidas, which was also one of the first collaborations between luxury fashion and a sportswear brand. Beyond Y-3, Yamamoto's career has lasted for over 50 years – during which the designer cultivated a very precise aesthetic, characterized by the deconstruction of traditional silhouettes, an exploration of visual themes of romantic-dark matrix veined with irony and the predominance of a color: black. It was Yamamoto who uttered the famous phrase about black in a 2000 interview with The New York Times:

«Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy - but mysterious. But above all black says this: "I don't bother you - don't bother me"».

Following the various ramifications of a overflowing creativity, the lines of clothes designed by Yamamoto began to multiply over the years, creating a convoluted family tree to say the least. Y's, Yohji Yamamoto, Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme and Costume D'Homme, Y's for men SHIRTS, Red Label and Black Label, Gothic Yohji Yamamoto Homme, Haute Couture. These are just a few of the many lines that went on the board over the years that then merged, mingled with each other or simply shut down. In all, Yamamoto's experimentalism dominated, his dark romance and his many cultural curiosities such as classic Japanese anime, which appeared in various collections of the Pour Homme line and especially in the FW07 where the artworks of the legendary designer Shotaro Ishinomori were used. 

The most important line of all, however, was Y-3, created in 2003 in collaboration with adidas and co-directed with Nic Galway who later collaborated with Kanye West on Yeezy design. This collaboration was revolutionary: it was the first case ever in which a high fashion designer creating a line of sportswear together with a brand-symbol of the industry balancing two completely different aesthetic codes. Something completely different from the phenomenon of sports lines at the end of the 90s or from the diffusion lines in general – a collaboration that anticipated both adidas ventures with Raf Simons and Rick Owens as well as that between Jun Takahashi and Nike. As he told i-D in 2016:

«Fashion had become so boring. I felt I had come too far from the street. I couldn't find people wearing my clothes anymore and I felt so lonely. At the time, New York businessmen were starting to walk to work in their suits and sneakers. I found this strange mix incredibly charming, a fascinating hybrid».

Yamamoto called Nike, which respectfully declined the offer. It was then the turn of adidas, which showed interest. After designing a limited edition sneaker for the brand, Yamamoto was able to create an entire collaborative line. The Y-3 collection debuted in New York with the SS03 collection and became a worldwide success. In 2003, commenting on the then shocking mix of avant-garde and sportswear, Janet Ozzard of Vogue said that "if Adidas's predictions come true, the mainstream is about to get a lot better looking". Modern luxury streetwear was born, and bore Yamamoto's signature. The best collection of the line was the FW07, which was shown on the basketball court of Hunter College in New York bringing to the degree of perfection the synthesis of the two aesthetic languages. In 2013 another highlight was touched with the creation of the adidas Y-3 Qasa, a re-run of the adidas Tubular Runner that has experienced a success that lasts to this day. The successful collections continued with at least two years of grace, 2015 and 2017, but still today Y-3 continues in its work more than seventeen years after its inception. At the age of 76, Yamamoto shows no sign of stopping, collaborating with cinema, the world of opera and adidas. His philosophy summed up in the sentence:

«With my eyes turned to the past, I walk backwards into the future».