London celebrates Yohji’s 30 years

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—by A BLOG curated by / Tuesday, March 15, 2011

On the exciting occasion of Yohji Yamamoto’s Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition and installations in collaboration with the Wapping Project, A BLOG contributor Felicity Shaw spoke to V&A curator Ligaya Salazar. The three-part exhibition sits in both East and West London, with a rare and exciting collection of iconic garments and installations that present a veritable ‘Yohji-fying’ of the British capital!

Felicity Shaw: Japanese fashion has become increasingly popular, with many exhibitions taking place over the last few years, most recently the ‘30 years of Japanese fashion’ at the Barbican. Why do you think this is?

Ligaya Salazar: The simple answer would be that 2011 is a big anniversary of the arrival of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo in Paris in 1981, but I think it is probably more complex. Designs by Yohji Yamamoto have been featured over twenty times in exhibitions since 1983 both as part of thematic exhibitions as well as three previous retrospectives. Yamamoto’s work has influenced fashion as a whole greatly and it is this influence that museums and art institutions are acknowledging.

FS: Why do you think Yohji is so successful in his collaborative work?

LS: Yohji Yamamoto said to me that he always leaves 5-10% of his design unfinished or open. This leaves a small part of his design open to interpretation by the photographer, the press, the customer or the curator. I believe it is this approach that makes his collaborations so interesting.

FS: How does this exhibition interact with the Wapping Bankside & Project installations?

LS: The V&A exhibition is the central and largest part of the project. It is really where people can see the breadth of Yohji Yamamoto’s womenswear and menswear from the last 30 years, the encounter of his work with the museum’s historic collections and the wider context of his work as for example his collaborations with filmmakers and choreographers. The Wapping Project installation provides an opportunity for visitors to experience one of Yamamoto’s oversized pieces one to one and the Bankside exhibition shows a selection of the great photographic output that Yamamoto has enabled through his wonderful catalogues.

Yohji Yamamoto in the atelier

FS: Yohji Yamamoto stated that ‘fabric is everything’. How did you work to display these beautiful fabrics in the best way?

LS: The most important aspect of this exhibition is that all garments are on open display and visitors are allowed to walk amongst them as equals. This way people can appreciate the intricacies of the fabrics as they can get up close to them.

FS: Why do you think that Yohji’s designs continue to feel fresh after 30 years?

LS: Yohji Yamamoto designs clothes to last, from the choice of fabric up to the details of his designs. Therefore, even the pieces from the 1980s do not feel dated at all.

FS: What makes this exhibition different to previous exhibitions representing Japanese design?

LS: This exhibition is about Yohji Yamamoto’s design and it really tries to represent his design aesthetic. It is also conceived as an encounter with the V&A, so is therefore very site-specific.

FS: Can you talk a little about your research preparations? How did you prepare for an exhibition this size?

LS: When I started working on this exhibition 2.5 years ago, I began talking to the Yamamoto team very regularly about the ideas for the exhibition and simultaneously started reading everything ever published on him. After this I began working on the publication and the pre-selection of the garments, followed by the design process with his long-term collaborator and lighting director Masao Nihei. Of course, there are many more steps that are part of this process, but perhaps too many to describe in a brief paragraph.

FS: I read that the working process behind creating such a large scale exhibition took 2 years. What has been your favourite stage of the journey?

LS: There were many aspects of the preparation I really enjoyed, but perhaps the most special moment was to go through his archives in both France and Tokyo to do the pre-selection. Particularly as his menswear was never shown before, it was amazing to be able to go through all of them.

FS: You have been at the V&A for 5 years now – what has been your favourite project to curate?

LS: That is a difficult question as each project is enjoyable for different reasons, especially as the scale and length differ so greatly from one to the next. The Yohji Yamamoto exhibition, however, is definitely amongst my favourites.