Looking closely at a garment of the the so-called Japanese school great master Yohji Yamamoto is not only a rare occasion, but the audience reaction is always the same too: silence and an expression that instantly changes the face, as if to say very simply: ‘Here we are behind’. Behind fashion, behind the seasonal trends, behind what one could usually see, behind the widespread boredom of making clothes with approximation.

In increasingly critical times for the clothing field, where more and more less space is left to the know-how, where the production rhythms are more and more compromised by the minimizing of the costs and especially by the increasing of the manufacturing companies profit margins, having the chance to intercept a Yohji Yamamoto’s work is like finding relief in the middle of the most hazardous desert. Because the high quality tailoring, applied to accessible models and with an eloquent design, could excite on the same level of every other noble artistic expression. And Yohji, more than ever, is a skilled weavers of ancient knowledges and contemporary solicitations, gained in metropolitan contexts with an high concentration of relationships, contaminations and syncretism.

For the Spring/Summer 2016 we have a personal interpretation of an Enlightenment atmospheres, in the bustiers composed by articulated asymmetries on the wider volumes of skirt and trousers, emphasized by the sumptuous scenario of the Hotel de Ville in Paris, selected for the runway show.

But the historical citation mixes and confuses itself with more contemporary and urban silhouette, evoked with determination by the lengths and the details of the overcoats, in the calculated disorder of certain dresses and tops

and especially in the explicit collaboration with the very young painter Yuuka Asakura (discover her instagram and twitter profiles) called to paint her abstract works on the already very precious Japanese cottons.

The ubiquitous black colour gets dirty with pictorial signs with a charming chromatic involvement, inviting the audience to observe with calm and attention, to stop by, discovering also the less showy gestures in fibres that reveal themselves in their curate and surprising three-dimensionality.

In opposition to the more pressing and emerging requests of time and space compression, Yohji Yamamoto with the most discreet savoir faire, remembers us that the beauty could be still part of our stories, we just need to never stop seeking it.

The Spring/Summer Yohji Yamamoto collection is on www.ivomilan.com