To some, the clothes are weird and draw snickers.
Maybe you’ve seen them-the ones with raw seams on the outside of a jacket, uneven hemlines, pockets worn inside out and new sweaters with big holes.
Most often, such nonconformist-OK, way-out-clothing comes from three Japanese designers who show their collections in Paris: Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake.
More recently, they’ve also been coming from a small group of young designers, primarily Belgian. Dubbed “New Wave,” these designers are on a different “deconstructivist” wavelength and also show in Paris. The major talent among them is Martin Margiela, though Ann Demeulemeester, Jean Colona and Helmut Lang also have been garnering followers.
But the most-widely recognized and commercially successful designers of these artistic, off-beat even cerebral fashions-depending on your viewpoint-are definitely the Japanese.
Last fall, Miyake celebrated his 20th year of showing in Paris with an exuberant presentation featuring ballet dancers as well as models. Kawakubo and Yamamoto were part of the explosion of Japanese designers who came to Paris just over 10 years ago with their revolutionary ragtag clothes that caused more controversy than grunge could ever hope to stimulate.
They’ve survived all that and now you can tell a pair of pants from a skirt: skirts no longer have assorted sleeves hanging from the front or sides. Clothes are layered but not piled on helter-skelter, totally obviating silhouette.
Don’t you get it?
But, their shows still are mind-boggling, practically bringing tears of joy to followers who get the message, while leaving others perplexed or doubled over.
In tune with the clothes, the shows’ music selections are, shall we say, screechingly strange.
Hair can look wet, tousled, dirty, ratted or, as per Kawakubo’s spring show, slicked down and covered with clear tape.
Models might be devoid of makeup, or they might look bruised, via makeup, or sport tears running down their cheeks, also via makeup. Kawakubo’s headgear for spring included something that resembled an octopus-granted, a little one, but still, an octopus. And the clothes, well, the clothes are what these designers are all about and, on the runways, they more often look like odd and eerie costumes than awesome, artistic fashions.
“You’ll have to see them in the showroom!” or “Wait until they get to the store!” have long been the pleas of retailers who carry these clothes. And, it is on the racks-or on their fans’ backs-that the ambiguous and mysterious appeal comes through.
Joan Weinstein, owner of Ultimo at 114 E. Oak St., has carried Miyake’s clothes for 20 years and picked up Comme and Yamamoto as soon as they started showing in Paris. June Blaker, owner of June Blaker at 200 W. Superior St., only carries the top three Japanese designers, as well as the less-controversial Matsuda (she’ll be carrying England’s chief innovator, Vivienne Westwood, this spring).
Not a total love affair
Though an ardent supporter of these designers, even Weinstein admits she doesn’t “love everything they do. I didn’t love those big, pouffy ballgowns Rei did for spring,” she says, but then she starts a litany of what she “absolutely adored,” including pinstriped sleeveless jackets and a pinstriped coat with one side ending at the waist, the other below the knee.
“To me, the Japanese offer fashion for the person whose aesthetic is different from others,” says Weinstein. “They have a different eye that looks at these clothes the same way that they look at art.”
These followers are indeed a rather exclusive group. Weinstein estimates that Ultimo has a dozen or so women who are total devotees and “make a beeline for the clothes the minute they’re in.”
Blaker’s male and female customers are interior designers, writers, art collectors, graphic designers-“people who have a philosophy about whatever they do. They want to say something in what they wear.” She says she has about 25 to 30 male and female customers who are “completely devoted to Comme and Yohji”; of which a third of these diehards are out-of-towners (Milwaukee, Cinncinnati, Detroit, Madison). “Some will buy several pieces,” says Blaker, “one always wants `a jacket that nobody else in Chicago will have,’ one comes in every single season for one cotton T-shirt ($75).”
What does she say to people who admit they “don’t get it?”
Blaker says, “I compare the pieces to art, tell them that the clothes say something about the times we’re in. I try to tell them that these things are all about design and line, that the designers challenge rules, that they challenge traditional ideas of beauty.”
Personal preferences
Of the three Japanese designers, Blaker believes Kawakubo is the most avant-garde. “She’s all about philosophy,” Blaker says of Kawakubo. “Yohji is beautiful cut and tailoring and there’s femininity in his things. Issey is the artist, nobody can compare to him.”
To Weinstein, Kawakubo is “modern, the innovator. You look at this season’s Comme and it’s somebody else’s next season. Her inventiveness is extraordinary. Comme clothes are also more feminine, Yohji is more tailored and architectural, sometimes stark.” She sees Miyake as “fun, whimsical, more Western, more understandable. His pleated things are absolutely brilliant” (pleated silk turtlenecks, around $350).
What they are not, both retailers claim, is “trendy.” Their clothes are “timeless.”
(Prices for clothes by the three designers is somewhat similar. White cotton tops are about $295; pants about $325; jackets, tunics and vests, generally from about $625 to $825, though some can go to $1,000; coats ranging from about $1,095 to $1,600, with some higher.)
What a vision
For MarilynBlaszka and DominicMarcheschi, owners of Blake at 2448 Lincoln Ave., the “visionary” is Martin Margiela, the designer they consider most forward-thinking. “Everybody is being influenced by him,” claims Marcheschi, “even Karl Lagerfeld and even an American designer,” he says, referring to Calvin Klein, whose spring line is more akin to New Wave European and Japanese than to traditional American sportswear. “Margiela is the seed that the mainstream feeds on,” says Blaszka.
Margiela, a cult hero to those who believe future fashion comes from literally tearing apart the old, is most associated with inside-out construction, unfinished seams, floor-sweeping hemlines and other aspects of “destroyed” or “deconstructed” fashion, terms most of these designers are said to dislike. “He is among the intellectual designers who are re-thinking what a garment is,” says Blaszka. “They don’t do the conventional, like a skirt with a front and a back.” (Margiela’s spring clothes, now at Blake, range from $115 for a cotton top to $968 for a crepe overcoat with raw seams.)
“Margiela’s clothes speak to people,” says Blaszka. “They just understand. They see the clothes and they are fascinated. They try them on and that’s it.”
