Yohji Yamamoto

Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto officially debuted his first brand Y’s in 1977. “When I started making clothes,” he says, “all I wanted was for women to wear men’s clothes.“ His debut in Paris in 1981 was a memorable, disruptive event: the pale-faced models, the oversized black shapes and his radical approach were such a contrast to the 1980s fashion that the press labelled the collection “Hiroshima chic”. “I think perfection is ugly,” Yamamoto says. “I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.” Since then, his androgynous, intellectual and anti-fashion aesthetic opened a new way in the fashion industry.