YOHJI YAMAMOTO: THE BLACK COLOR PALETTE
by Alexandra Androutsopoulou
by Alexandra Androutsopoulou
Yohji Yamamoto has built a career on proving that black — aggressive, rebellious, somber, romantic or seductive — is beautiful. He is the poet of black, the director of fashion's film noir.
There are three reasons that can explain his obsession with this color.
First of all, black was the color that perpetually adorned Yohji's widowed mother when he was growing up. His father was killed in the war, so he went off to study fashion in order to help her dressmaking business. Yamamoto was heavily influenced from his mother, and the images of his childhood have played a key role on his aesthetics as a designer.
"Black is modest and arrogant at the same time," he says. "Black is lazy and easy — but mysterious. It means that many things go together, yet it takes different aspects in many fabrics. You need black to have a silhouette. Black can swallow light, or make things look sharp. But above all black says this: 'I don't bother you — don't bother me!"'
If we try to give a further explanation on his statement, we could claim that Yamamoto is also influenced from the “kaizen” Japanese philosophy.
Kaizen, in short, means "constant, continuous improvement," and is a mindset you can apply anywhere, at any job. While Kaizen translates just to "good change" and doesn't really have much implied meaning beyond that, in productivity circles the term means "constant, continual improvement." Put simply, every aspect of an organization should, at all times, strive to do what it does better. The philosophy first appeared when several Japanese businesses, shortly after World War II, embraced the idea that doing things the way they've always been done was a bad idea, especially when better options were available that would make them more competitive. Inspired by western competitors and manufacturing methods, "Kaizen" came to be synonymous with company-wide efforts to improve upon and intelligently streamline business practices and manufacturing methods while simultaneously respecting the product, craft, or the people involved with making it.
This kind of continuous improvement can be broken down into six steps:
1. Standardize: Come up with a process for a specific activity that's repeatable and organized.
2. Measure: Examine whether the process is efficient using quantifiable data, like time to complete, hours spent, etc.
3. Compare: Compare your measurements against your requirements. Does this process save time? Does it take too much time? Does it accomplish the desired result?
4. Innovate: Search for new, better ways to do the same work or achieve the same result. Look for smarter, more efficient routes to the same end-goal that boost productivity.
5. Standardize: Create repeatable, defined processes for those new, more efficient activities.
6. Repeat: Go back to step one and start again.
2. Measure: Examine whether the process is efficient using quantifiable data, like time to complete, hours spent, etc.
3. Compare: Compare your measurements against your requirements. Does this process save time? Does it take too much time? Does it accomplish the desired result?
4. Innovate: Search for new, better ways to do the same work or achieve the same result. Look for smarter, more efficient routes to the same end-goal that boost productivity.
5. Standardize: Create repeatable, defined processes for those new, more efficient activities.
6. Repeat: Go back to step one and start again.
It may seem exhausting, but once it's part of your mental approach to work, or your company (or team) culture, it’ll feel very natural. If you're always looking for better ways to do things, and you're always willing to give them a try, it's just a step up to formalize it and make sure everyone's on the same page.
Of course, we should point out that Kaizen is not change for change's sake. It's deliberate, constant improvement, and changes that don't actually bring you rewards shouldn't be made. Productivity is a double-edged sword after all. You can spend more time trying out new things and researching new tools than you would actually doing your work. Remember, the best productivity system is the one that helps you get things done, and the best apps are the ones you'll actually use. Keep that in mind when you're looking for ways to optimize your work.
It is obvious enough, that Yohji creates his collections based on kaizen philosophy. At first he creates the silhouettes, then he focusses on adding the different aspects that will make the new collection even better than the previous one. On this way he strives for continuous improvement through a standard process. He combines different activities on a routine and a certain frame that assure him success. Black is his standard color, is the beginning from where the entire process starts every time. Is the color that Yohji knows exactly how to use it, is “what he does better”.
Moreover, Yamamoto feels that colors can distract from the nature of the material: the texture, the hang, the way it sways to your walk. Black was a way of focusing on the important stuff. Describing his preoccupation with asymmetry and monochromatic palettes, Yamamoto says: “In the city, there are so many fashions, so many colors, so many decorations, it looks very ugly. I felt I should not make people’s eyes disturbed by using horrible colors.” Instead, Yamamoto was fascinated by the way the cut or wash could make a piece of clothing charming, rather than using “sentimental colors.” Still, for the most part, black – the designer has always said that this, the quintessential fashion non-color, focuses the attention on cut – this is fashion as object of beauty and, in this, it remains unsurpassed.
This abstraction, the modernism and the lack of visual definition in Yohji’s work, seemed to be layered in meaning, in the spirit of Mark Rothko's "dark" paintings.
Just like Yamamoto, Rothko realized that the bright colors that he used in his first paintings, were too beguiling, too fascinating for the tragic themes he sought to express, that they distracted the viewers focus from those themes. Rothko did not think of his paintings as simply decorative works but rather through them sought to awaken the universal human sentiment, to indicate the absurdity of human existence and the tragedy of being human. Through the exclusion of bright colors, Rothko emphasized the conveying of the artist’s intentions, rather than depending on a works visual fascination. He tried, consciously, to create works that were equal in meaning but with as little color as possible.
Rothko, in a statement immediately prior to his establishment of the Rothko style, commented, “The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea. As examples of such obstacles, I give memory, history or geometry. Eliminating obstacles, one clarifies expression.”
Rothko would regularly state that the dark part was always above, and in the autumn of 1968 when he began his Dark Paintings, he commented, “All the crosses we load on our own
shoulders”. Rothko considered that by living, humans bear the essential burden of suffering and death, and he expressed that burden as a dark cloud. Next, turning to the lighter color painted in the lower half, given that Rothko noted that his own arts were composed on a theory of dualism, the lower section of brighter color was the resurrection from death, and thus can be seen as the expression of rebirth and the state of peaceful happiness in life.
shoulders”. Rothko considered that by living, humans bear the essential burden of suffering and death, and he expressed that burden as a dark cloud. Next, turning to the lighter color painted in the lower half, given that Rothko noted that his own arts were composed on a theory of dualism, the lower section of brighter color was the resurrection from death, and thus can be seen as the expression of rebirth and the state of peaceful happiness in life.
It is a fact that the black color palette of the Japanese avant garde fashion –especially Yohji Yamamoto, has a great influence to many Western, contemporary fashion designers and it has changed the aesthetics of fashion nowadays.
To begin with Raf Simons, with his SS97 Teenage Summer Camp collection. Sent down the runway with a guide on talking to your teen (“Tolerate differences. View your teenager as an individual distinct from you”) the skinny black trousers and shirts – immortalized in the designer’s legendary handbook The Fourth Sex – sum up Simons’ particular 90s breed of teen rebellion.
Perhaps one of the most well-known modern-day connoisseurs of black clothing is prince of dark design Rick Owens. Flanked by his sidekick, wife, muse and icon Michèle Lamy, Owens leads a tribe of black-clad ravens who sit somewhere in the indeterminate space between monasticism, gothicism and grunge. With a mane of flowing black hair and usually seen wearing a sleeveless black tunic, the designer epitomizes his own vision.
Last but not least, after rising from the depths of Tumblr, “health goth” was the trend that became 2014’s second most Googled (right after Normcore). The style was known for blending sportswear – think Nike socks and caps, Adidas tennis skirts and lots of mesh – with fetish elements like leather bondage chokers and a dark, goth-influenced palette. The trend was also represented on the runways through designers such as Hood By Air and Alexander Wang.
