Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion / PEM

Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion
Peabody Essex Museum / Salem MA

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

“Avant-Garde” : new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or the people introducing them.

Peabody Essex Museum’s new exhibition, Future Beauty, explores Japanese avant-garde fashion through the creations of Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yoshi Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi and Tao Kurihara, to name a few. These designers, by rethinking form, technique and material recast fashion into works of art. Using cultural Japanese influences such as the iconic kimono, origami, macramé, calligraphy scrolls, and Harajuku, an alternate definition of beauty is on display that, in some cases, transforms the body into alien and architectural like shapes. This exhibition of skirts, dresses, gowns and suits is a celebration of radical fashion design that began in the early 1980’s, a force that reshaped western fashion for the first time in history. Their influence is evident today on the runway, clothes that embrace eastern world values of imperfection, asymmetry, simplicity, and subtlety.

Future Beauty explores four design concepts:

In Praise of Shadows

Author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's 1933 essay, "In Praise of Shadows" is credited as the foundation for this eastern design movement. It is a celebration of Japanese aesthetics illustrating their skill with light and shade, qualities found in shadows. This writing has been referenced as the influence for the famous Spring/Summer 1983 collections shown in Paris by Rei Kawakubo and Yoshi Yamamoto. Their runway looks used a monochromatic palette described as "Black, White, and Stark". These dark, asymmetric, deconstructed ripped and unraveled garments went against the vibrant color collections of leading French designers of the period such Yves Saint Laurent, creating quite a stir among the fashion establishment . Yamamoto's white silk/wool satin dress with twisting and wool flannel little black asymmetric dress are examples from this movement displayed at the museum.

Tradition & Innovation

After WWII there was an explosion of synthetic and industrial fabric development. A new generation of technically advanced synthetic fibers was born creating a wide and sophisticated variety of fabrics for the Japanese

textile industry. With the banding together of technologists and fashion designers, new dying methods and weaving techniques expanded creative capability producing never before seen fabrics made up of diverse visual effects. 

"Techno-Couture" became known for unconventional tailoring techniques using origami folds instead of darts; use of processed silk, paper, polyester and stainless steel

fibers for new visual effects, voluminous constructions using fabric as a sculptural material. "Future Beauty" features ethereal chiffon honeycomb ensembles from Junya Watanabe's Autumn/Winter 2000-2001 Collection. A real show stopper is Hiroaki Ohuya's bright red polyester film cape and skirt from his "Wizard of Jeanz" series. These creations straddle both "Flatness" and "Tradition and Innovation" categories. Ohya's conceptual garments start out as closed books that unfold like giant oriental lanterns creating vests, pants, one piece jackets, capes, skirts and capes. His constructions are a modern twist on traditional Japanese paper fabrics used for a type of kimono worn by priests, the kamiko. 

Flatness 

"Flatness" explores the Japanese concept of "Ma" as applied to fashion: the use of negative space, the tension between form and flatness, creating garments that achieve an abstract relationship with the body by transcending physical shape through line and mass experimentation. The conventional Western emphasis on form-fitting tailoring for couture is replaced with a new language of asymmetry and deconstruction referencing traditional kimono draping, honeycomb lantern construction and the art of paper folding, origami. Highlighted in this exhibit is a black wool jersey dress from the Autumn/Winter Collection 1983-1984 by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons. A minimal feature sculpted white mannequin stands against a super sized photographic print by Naoya Hatakeyama from the Kyoto Costume Institute draped in this garment. The Lambda print from 2009 captures the dramatic and stark geometry of Kawakubo's garment laid flat. It's essence is unmistakeably Japanese in both it's abstract flattened image or draped dress presentation. 

Cool Japan

"Tokyo is now the world capital of street style".
-------------------Suzy Menkes, 2000

Cool Japan explores the explosion of youth fashion culture emanating from the city's Harajuku and Shibuya districts.
The style is all about "personal transformation through fashion" without any clear social messages.
Ensembles displayed cover various sub-trends within the category:
"Lolita": Based on Nobokov's mid-1950's book expressing fashion in a child-like sensibility using frills, petticoats, and ribbons with a ultra-feminine color palette
"Cosplay": A contraction of the words costume and play; participants wear outfits and accessories to represent a specific idea or character
"Gothic": Creations in the all-black style of Western Goth subculture
"Manga": Designs based on Japanese comic characters such as Hello Kitty and one of my childhood favorites, Astro Boy
"80's Hip Hop/Punk"

Tao Kurihara's overdress and tunic from her Spring/Summer Collection 2010 included here is a hybrid of "Goth-Loli" with the rebellious attitude of "Punk". A white overdress of finely torn synthetic cotton and silk, twisted and knotted using a macrame like technique, is layered over a sheer black polyester tunic. The effect of the knotted overlay is one of a dramatic, bold accessory. This ensemble is edgy, strong and totally haute-couture!

In addition to the nearly 100 provocative garments on display, designer's fashion shows run on a continual loop throughout the gallery on large format video screens. Contemporary couture pieces hang on one wall for visitors to try on. This show is on view till January 26th, 2014 where it will travel to Japan's National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto in March. If you love fashion and have a passion for the avant-garde, I highly recommend taking in this exhibit!