The late designer, Kansai Yamamoto, on dealing with David Bowie

Recently, we lost renowned avant-garde fashion designer, Kansai Yamamoto. Yamamoto is best understood for this long-term collaboration with David Bowie, specifically the outfits for the Martian rocker’s Ziggy Stardust tour.

On the Style United site, there’s a piece about the 2018 Brooklyn Museum night with Yamamoto, carried out in assistance of the David Bowie Is show.

Here, Yamamoto explains his cooperation with Bowie:

” Unlike me, Bowie was peaceful, shy, but on phase he turns a switch and becomes David Bowie,” states Yamamoto. “Me, I’m always that method.” They shared a love of what the designer calls “radical look,” and when asked what they discovered from each other, he replies that through Bowie he established his understanding of Western gown while he assisted Bowie interpret Eastern clothing. He concurs that he sees a direct line in between what he created in the 70 s for Bowie and the current discussion on gender and gown. “I approached Bowie’s clothes as if I was developing for a female,” he admits. “Notice there is no zipper in front.” But he feels proud seeing how the younger generation going to the “David Bowie Is” exhibit can express themselves when compared to the societal limitations he encountered in Japan 50 years back, as a self-taught, broke, designer introducing his career at the age of21 A professional photographer had actually snapped a photo of him strolling along London’s Kings Road and it was included on the cover of Life publication. “I felt every day I was the model in a fashion program and everybody around me were members of the audience,” he states. “There were sometimes, people looked at me weird.”

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Images: FashionUnited and FaceMePLS (CC BY 2.0)