Yohji Yamamoto (2 Oct)

Why is retail-friendly a fashion slur? I asked myself this question last night as the crowd filed out of Yamamoto’s stiflingly hot show in the rue St. Martin. ‘Retail’, sighed a celebrated fashion blogger behind me. ‘Meh’, replied her companion, a chemical blonde wearing F/W 09/10’s requisite goth-apocalypse combo of peaked shoulders and gladiator leather. Maybe it’s time, in a season full of dainty euphemism, to call a cat a cat, as the French say; after all, isn’t ‘a palette of makeup colours’ just a way of saying ‘playing it safe in blue, black, and beige’? And, frankly, isn’t everyone playing it safe? It’s true that Yamamoto’s biggest creative risk this season was in the last few pieces: a kind of shadow collection, doubling the first looks – which were all in black and seemed dead-set on winning the Most Intimidating Shoulders Contest. These charming final pieces, in laser-perforated floral prints, were lovely, deeply vulnerable characters in this season’s maneater film noir. Apart from Nina Ricci, which seems to be undergoing the world’s first female-to-female sex reassignment in the wake of Theysken’s short but adamantly anti-retail tenure at the helm, we haven’t seen very much of the girly-girl. MH
www.yohjiyamamoto.co.jp/