Booklet Across Japan_English version

JAPAN

4 March ‒ 3 September 2017

Visitor’s guide

Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano, Fall 2015 Couture ― Photo: Paolo Roversi/Vogue Italia, September 2011 © Paolo Roversi

Across

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Central hall

Introduction Yokoso. Welcome. In 2017, Hasselt is celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Japanese Garden in style.

The Yokoso Festival has a great many activities in store for you in several locations, where you can enjoy Japanese culture and traditions. The Hasselt Fashion Museum has developed Across Japan, an exhibition that takes a closer look at the fascinating cross-fertilization between Japanese and Western fashion.

In 2017, Japanese fashion is a strong brand, inspiring fashion trends around the world, both in streetwear and couture. Since 1970, the work of Japanese fashion designers has undeniably influenced Western clothing styles.

Following in the footsteps of stealthy vanguard Issey Miyake (b. 1938), Yohji Yamamoto (b. 1943) and Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942) created a veritable furore in Paris in 1981, when they presented their collections there together for the first time. Their frayed, loose-fitting, ripped black designs caused quite a shake-up in the clothing industry, introducing a completely new fashion concept in the process. From then on, the West perked up, taking a keen interest in all things Japanese and picking up the thread of a centuries-old, intercultural dialogue again.

The intriguing new styles proposed by the Japanese avant-garde designers and the Western interpretation of this “Japanese� aesthetic are at the heart of the exhibition Across Japan. How, why and thanks to whom did Japanese 2

ideas inspire and transform Western fashion? How did this exchange influence product and process innovation? The exhibition seeks an answer to these questions in four themes: wabi-sabi, kawaii, gi-jutsu and ma.

While Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo may have unleashed a real revolution in the fashion world during the last 25 years of the twentieth century, Japan has always had a dominant presence in fashion and culture. Since the seventeenth century, wealthy Dutch citizens liked to wear a japonsche rock. This housecoat, which they wore on informal occasions, was inspired by the kimonos they had seen on their trade missions to Japan. In the nineteenth century, people took such a keen interest in Japanese culture that the French author and historian Jules ClarĂŠtie even coined a term for this hype, namely japonism. This historical phenomenon is examined in the first part of the exhibition, which commences around 1850.

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JAPONISM

ジ ャ ポ ニ ズ ム

Attic

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Attic

1. Japonism After 200 years of economic and cultural isolation, Japan finally opened its doors to the West, which thus was introduced to Japanese culture for the first time in a significant manner. New trade agreements resulted in an unprecedented stream of goods and travellers. The Japanese had a knack for business, which encouraged them to create consumer goods that were exclusively designed for export, including garments. While the shape of quilted day coats with a train and additional fabric to accommodate a bustle were adapted to Western fashions, the fabrics (habutae silk), the stitching, the embroidery and the belt, made of kumihimo (Japanese wool) are typically Japanese. Known as Yokohama robes, after the port from which they were shipped, these were the first garments to be made after Japan’s opening to the West.

They were worn in-house, as fashionable day clothes.

These day coats are just one example of the penchant for Japanese goods in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Better yet, the end of the embargo in combination with a number of international exhibitions around and shortly after the mid-Nineteenth century gave rise to a huge interest in all things Japanese. This included parasols and fans, which combined East and West in their design and execution.

The designs on the fan blades were inspired by traditional Japanese costumes, iconic landscapes such as Mount Fiji and all kinds of animals and vegetation. The execution was adapted to suit Western tastes. This widespread predilection for Japan in the West even became an -ism: japonism.

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Until this point, Japan’s influence on fashion was limited to the introduction of Japanese motifs, silk weaving and painting techniques. In essence, these garments still reflected European styles. But this was about to change around 1900. Thanks to new sources of inspiration and the kimono especially, the West was suddenly confronted with a clothes concept that was entirely different from anything it had seen until then. The kimono, literally something someone wears, no longer emphasised the waist but the shoulders of this rectangular garment, which fell down naturally without being contained. The term kimono was first used around this time, to refer to the new rectangular cut which originated in East Asia and Japan. Many fashion designers started to present collections that were strongly influenced by the principles of the kimono. Wealthy Parisian women loved the kimono-style coats, dresses and pyjamas, which the French fashion king Paul Poiret (1879-1944) introduced as a garment to wear in one’s boudoir. The robes japonaises of the French couture house of Babani (which operated from 1895 until 1944), a series of elegant day coats, were also highly sought after. In 1910-1920, fashion magazines promoted the kimono silhouette, sleeves, seams and overlapping closures as well as the characteristic belt or obi you wore with it.

Recently researchers have even gone as far as suggesting that the straight cut of dresses in the Twenties was probably inspired by the kimono concept. Finally, a very popular gadget during the twenties is the vanity case, a box or bag to store a mirror and make-up. This gem is inspired by the Japanese inrĹ?, a little box attached to the obi.

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The kimono continued to inspire designers even after the Twenties. Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975) avoided anything that distorted the natural line of women’s bodies.

She collected ukiyo-e (Japanese prints), and so the kimono became an obvious source of inspiration. Stressing a loose fit and flat construction, her designs consisted of panels that were almost exclusively cut along straight lines. Her historic invention of the bias cut is definitely based on the rectangular cut of the kimono.

The Spaniard Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) carefully studied and used Vionnet’s method and her interpretation of the principles of the kimono. He owed a lot to Japanese fashion by way of Vionnet. The influence of Japonism in his designs of the Fifties is noticeable in his iconic cocoon coat and especially in the fluid lines, the unique volumes and the elimination and/or raising of the waistline.

Barring a few singular interventions, such as the kabuki dresses of the Austrian-American designer Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985) in 1963, Japan would only gain a firm foothold again in Western fashion in the Seventies. Until then, Japonism was defined as a Western perspective and interpretation of Japan, in the form of chrysanthemum prints, designs, fabrics, construction, but in the Seventies this changed.

Japanese fashion designers finally erupted onto the Western fashion scene. Hanae Mori (b. 1926) paved the way. She was the first Japanese designer to present her collections on the catwalks of New York and Paris and the first and only female Asian designer to date to have been admitted to the 7

closed club of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.

She organised her first overseas show in New York in 1965.

She succeeded in drawing the attention of the financial elite and was promoted to the position of couturière, the highest title a designer can achieve in Paris, from 1977 onwards.

Her unique combination of impeccable Western tailoring and typical Japanese fabrics and prints with cherry blossoms, butterflies and Japanese calligraphy was instantly successful. Kenzo Takada (b. 1939) made his debut in the French capital even earlier, in 1970. His unconventional mix of bold colours, fabrics and prints which were all rooted in Japanese culture, were a hit from the onset. Unlike Mori he capitalised on the growing success of prêt-à-porter, creating casual and popular clothes. Issey Miyake and Kansai Yamamoto (b. 1944; not to be confused with Yohji Yamamoto) kicked off their Parisian careers around the same time. Whereas Kansai Yamamoto had fun with futuristic and plebeian extremism and flashy applications, Miyaka instead focused on the essence of Japanese clothing, creating flat, oversized constructs, that hung down from the shoulders. In that sense, he paved the way for the more cerebral and aestheticised visions of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

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可 愛 い

KAWAII

First floor

侘 び 寂 び

WABI-SABI

技 術

GI-JUTSU

First floor

2. Wabi-Sabi In the sixteenth century, a Japanese young man named Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) decided to perfect his tea ceremony skills. He apprenticed with the tea master Takeno Joo. The tea master decided to put his ability to the test by asking him to tend to the garden. Rikyu cleared the leaves, raked the soil until it was simply perfect and cast a final glance at his impeccable garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he gently shook a cherry tree so the flower petals randomly floated to the ground. Even today, the Japanese venerate Rikyu as the master of wabi-sabi. This typically Japanese concept is synonymous of the beauty of imperfection, transience, simplicity, authenticity, irregularity and suggestiveness.

And it is this sensitivity, which is also strongly apparent in the early collections of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. Wabi-sabi is expressed in their work by deconstructivism, with unravelling seams, tears, buttons and irregular hemlines. In 1981, the two designers, whose evolution is especially interlinked in the early years of their career, transferred the aesthetics of simplicity to the most glamorous stage in the world, namely the Paris catwalks. Their designs were completely the opposite of the flashy, tight, sexy and status-driven designs by Thierry Mugler (b. 1948) and Gianni Versace (b. 1946) that were all the rage at the time. The Destroy collection that Rei Kawakubo presented the following year was the talk of the town. It was shown on unkempt models, whose grimy faces had been smeared with war paint and who stomped out on the catwalk to the 12

beats of a drum kit. Kawakubo consciously undermined the Western ideal of beauty, offering her own, alternative idea of femininity, with her intellectual, deconstructivist designs.

From that time onwards, Kawakubo focused on creating inspired collections that challenge preconceptions about how women - and men - dress. This is especially obvious in her Body meets dress, Dress meets body creations for her 1997 S/S collection, also referred to as Lumps and Bumps, and subsequently in her 2010 and 2014 S/S collections. In them, a series of looks expand in unusual places with bumps and/or atrocious shapes stuffed with goose down. It was her way of questioning the sexualisation and commercialisation of the human body by the fashion industry. This radical vision finally dealt with the Western beauty ideal, which traditionally preferred flashy and tight-fitting and finished clothes. Additional, frequently used elements of this new beauty are the preference for black and white, asymmetry and inside-out. After being considered quite controversial in the early years of career, Kawakubo is now widely accepted as one of the most influential designers in fashion history.

This spring, the Metropolitan Museum in New York will dedicate a monograph exhibition to her.

A few years after the Japanese designers created a furore in Paris, the Antwerp Six also hit up the Paris fashion scene.

While the Japanese and the Antwerp designers minimised the influence of other designers, it is worth noting that both groups were inspired by similar ideas. Like Kawakubo, Martin Margiela (b. 1957) felt that imperfection and deconstruction pave the way for authenticity. Margiela liked to 13

create new and unusual contexts for clothes or the sharing of clothes. His recycling of the tabi is especially noteworthy in this context. Tabi are the traditional Japanese socks, which separate the large toe from the other toes, so they can be worn in sandals. He gave them a new lease on life, in his iconic tabi boots. Other signs of anti-fashion in Margiela’s designs include his genius white labels or the anonymous models on his catwalk. On certain levels, Margiela even went further than the Japanese when it came to challenging the rules of the fashion world and of haute couture. His main provocation, however, was the use of second-hand clothes, which he took apart and reassembled or recycled in his beautiful “artisan” collections.

Whereas Kawakubo wanted to portray a new type of woman in the early Eighties, who was both strong and independent, like boys or men (“Comme des garçons”), Ann Demeulemeester (b. 1959) started from a different position ten years later, namely that women are strong. She purposefully blurred the lines between genders. The impact of her pure and perfectly cut garments, which combined rough edges with refined suits with a more traditional cut, is similar to that of the Japanese designers. Like Kawakubo, she was fascinated by the poetic qualities of black and white, by the way fabrics twist, by drapery and asymmetry.

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3. Kawaii Nowadays Japanese fashion encompasses so much more than the intellectual avant-garde styles that are associated with the first Japanese wave of the Eighties. Tokyo street style has garnered global interest since the mid-Nineties.

The hotspots of this youthful fashion style are Shibuya and Harakuju, two districts in the Japanese capital. In fact, it is an amalgam of styles though, which are worn by groups of young people and subcultures, and which are characterised by artificial exaggeration, a Lolita-like grace and, gradually also, a disconcerting romanticism. They include kogal (school uniforms), Lolita and her darker variant, the Gothic Lolita, punk, manga, anime, cosplay and so on. These subcultural styles are so dominant that high fashion is even unable to ignore them any longer.

The internationally used container concept for referring to this dominant trend in Japanese street fashion is called kawaii. Kawaii literally means cute and the perfect incarnation of this is Hello Kitty, a little girl with a bow in her hair. This was commercially launched in 1974 in Japan and has since become an internationally renowned brand, on millions of products. Including clothing and accessories. In the early days and in essence, kawaii fashion is mainly white or pastel-coloured, with puffed sleeves, lace, ribbons, large bows and white ankle socks with ruffles.

Kawaii has carved out a modest yet relevant position for itself in the world of high-end accessories. The collaborati15

on between art and fashion is especially interesting in this context. From 2002, the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) worked with Louis Vuitton to create a new version of the French brand’s renowned monogram handbags. He is known for incorporating elements of popular culture such as manga in high art. He applied this principle to various series that he created for Louis Vuitton, and which all share the same striking kawaii sensitivity. In this context, the work of Niels Peeraer (b. 1989) is also highly relevant. This young Antwerp designer is internationally praised for his luxurious and very distinctive handbags and accessories, which consciously explore the boundaries of cuteness. In view of his unique aesthetics, it is easy to see why his designs are such a success in Asia. He creates an alienating setting to underscore the cuteness of his designs in the photo styling of his collections, which clearly echoes the interpretation of kawaii of other high-end designers.

A similar distinctive interpretation of cuteness is also reflected in the Gothic Lolita style. The Goth-Loli combines the cute and feminine fripperies of the Lolita style with the dark style of the Western Gothic subculture. These looks often combine frivolous T-shirts with crinolines under knee-long dresses, accessorised with black bows, crosses and platform shoes or other harder elements. Vivienne Westwood’s 2014 S/S collection, which combined pretty pastel pink and white crinoline dresses and lilac babydolls with Greek sandals or platform shoes, black hairbands and cool hairdos is reminiscent of this darker Lolita style.

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Such ambiguous kawaii interpretations, which toy with combinations of cuteness and scariness, ugliness and beauty, strange and alienating beauty, are also the most interesting ones. One of the most important designers in this category is Jun Takahashi (b. 1969) of the cult label Undercover. He creates eccentric and bizarre collections in his Undercoverlab workshop, where he is surrounded by an eclectic and surreal assortment of strange objects. “In my head there is always something beautiful and something ugly and they are both equal. I’m not interested in simple beauty. But likewise, I’m not interested in ugliness.” The film Alice (1988) by the Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer, which was based on Alice in Wonderland and which portrays malevolent antique dolls in a dilapidated interior, inspired him to create a fantastic and alienating S/S collection in 2005. The looks are finished with eyeballs for buttons, fake teeth, brains, and a skull, which is hidden in an enormous garden hat. “Creepy poetry” is probably the best way to describe his style.

Rei Kawakubo also often strays into the ambiguous kawaii world, in which ugliness and beauty engage in an interesting dialogue. Her experiments with lingerie-inspired styles, as in her 2001-02 A/W collection, are a good illustration of this. The Fifties babydolls, slips, corsets and bras, which she used to put together her looks, evoke the traditional sexy and cutesy image of women. By cutting and reassembling them into new looks, however, Kawakubo ensured her women looked powerful, witty and aware of their sexiness.

Another designer who excelled at the Janus-like combination of strangeitude and beauty is Kawakubo’s protégé, Junya 17

Watanabe (b. 1969). He started out as a pattern designer at Comme des Garรงons in 1984. Since then, this productive designer, who has been designing under his own name since 1992, has been internationally praised for his innovative pattern manipulation and interesting use of synthetic materials. He likes a number of themes, such as old denim, military looks and punk anti-fashion. At the same time, he also enjoys reinterpreting classics, such as the puffa jacket. In his 2009 A/W collection, he transformed these into cocoon-shaped capes, dresses and stoles, that became sculptural conveyors of a dark romanticism. Five years later, Yamamoto also created a collection starting from the puffa jacket, which resulted in a series of strange, oversized shapes with a high goth cocooning feel. Some of them featured hand-painted graffiti tattoo designs, with a strong manga look and feel.

Bernard Wilhelm is a very unique artist who is difficult to categorise. His collections all have a fascinating streetwear feel, borrowing elements from a wide cultural and social spectrum, including Japanese streetworkers (2005 S/S) and the folksy clothing styles of Tirol (2007 S/S). He purposefully distances himself from the more serious avant-garde style with this humorous twist, creating a cool and strange alternative, which is very popular in Japan where he is very successful.

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4. Gi-jutsu When the Japanese avant-garde designers launched their collections in Paris in the early Eighties, they pushed back the boundaries. Their penchant for stoic and dramatic black and white and shabby albeit suggestive infinito undermined Western ideas about beauty and created a controversy in the Paris fashion world. But one thing everybody agrees on, including the critics and that is that the Japanese designers have a unique sensitivity when it comes to textile. Their unorthodox garments display an exceptional wealth of texture, of unbleached, ruched felt, unique dyeing techniques such as shibori and subtly woven patterns. They cast aside the existing materials, choosing to work instead with textile designers and technologists to create their own, original fabrics. Their designs grow organically out of these unique fabrics. In accordance with Japanese traditional and traditional Buddhist faith, material and form are inseparable.

In fact, the fabric even dictates the form in this case. This interest in new fabrics and high-tech processes means that Japanese designers now fulfil an exemplary role around the world.

One designer who paved the way for this collaboration of designers with the textile industry is Issey Miyake. In the early of his career, in the Eighties, the designer used forgotten traditional fabrics as well as introducing modern technology for manufacturing new textiles, working closely with his textile director Makiko Minagawa. In the late Eighties and early Nineties, Miyake developed his famous 19

pleating technique. This obviously has its roots in origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. When producing pleated clothes, the traditional method consists of first pleating the fabric and then modelling in into a garment. By reversing the process and folding the garment after the cutting and sewing, Miyake created new artefacts that organically combine material, form and function.

Rei Kawakubo also experimented with pleats. For her 1998 S/S collection, she created an off-white dress, with two hand-folded cones over it, decorated with a vinyl-coated flower pattern. As is so often the case in Kawakubo’s designs, she challenges the notion of what is wearable.

At the same time, the dress is very representative of the Japanese avant-garde. It incarnates three traditional Japanese principles: the origami-like folds epitomise gi-jutsu, the frayed hems are typical of wabi-sabi and the space between the folds and the body are ma (see below). In her 2000 S/S collection, Kawakubo continued to experiment with dimensions, layers, folds and ripples. The off-white front panels, which seem to be made of soft fur especially stand out. They are actually made of a wide variation of materials that have been stitched onto the fabric. In that sense, it is quite similar to Ann Demeulemeester’s 2005 A/W collection, which also used layers and softness, and which everyone remembers because the huge scarves, made of large numbers of alpaca yarns.

Junya Watanabe continued Kawakubo’s study of the endless variations on draped fabric, ultimately turning origami 20

into his trademark. For his 2001 techno-couture collection, he created garments made of hundreds of layers of nylon organza, which resembled Japanese 3D paper lanterns. His techniques transcended conventional tailoring, culminating in architectural forms. He endlessly experiments with fluorescent fabrics, plastics, industrial fibres, glow-in-the-dark fabrics. His futuristic designs are completely consistent with the experimental fabrics he uses.

But other, non-Japanese designers were equally fascinated by origami. Dries Van Noten (b. 1958), Riccardo Tisci (b.

1974) for Givenchy and Bill Gaytten (b. 1960) for John Galliano referenced this art in their designs Gaytten’s personal interest in architecture and Japan in 2013 inspired a collection in which volume, drapery, origami-like folds and the cut were key themes.

This attention to fabrics and how they can be processed, which is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, continued to live on in Watanabe’s bucolic prints and in the graffiti-like decorations at Comme des Garçons. It also influenced Western designers. Dries Van Noten for example used digital prints of original Japanese garments from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Thom Browne decorated his distinctly Japanese looking designs with hand-made collages of Japoneries while Delpozo decorated rug-like raffia jacquard with candy-coloured embroidery.

Like Watanabe, Yoshiki Hishinuma (b. 1958) is also a master of high-tech. Having worked as an assistant to Issey 21

Miyake at one time, he started to create his own fabrics when he was unable to find a suitable fabric for his designs.

He experimented with frequently-used traditional methods of tie-dyeing and smocking, combining this with hightech materials and industrial processes. He chose to work with the most progressive Japanese manufacturers for this.

During his career, he collaborated with many designers and today he is considered one of the most inventive fabric designers of the world.

The Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen (b. 1984) combines technology and science in an even more far-reaching way in her creations. Since her first show in 2007, she has blended the newest technology with precision handwork and the most radical materials and construction methods with the most traditional variants. She has succeeded in creating some highly distinctive, bold designs as a result. Van Herpen was the first designer to understand and introduce the endless potential of 3D printing in fashion. The relationship with Japan is evident in the name of her A/W 2016 couture collection, namely Seijaku, the Japanese word for seeking serenity in the chaos of life. But it is also apparent in the music, the set and last but not least in her designs, which are real technological feats. Van Herpen, for example, experimented with Japanese organza, woven with polymer yarns that are five times thinner than human hair. She uses the shibori technique to obtain a honeycomb, quilted effect in a short dress, that is almost weightless as a result. For that same collection, she also created ethereal pleated organza dresses, with a line print, creating a fascinating trompe l’oeil 22

effect with the interaction between the print and the pleats.

Finally, Tokio KumagaĂŻ (1947-1987) played an interesting role in the world of accessories, because of his distinctive approach to shoes. After training at the renowned Bunka College of Fashion in Tokyo, where other prominent designers, such as Kenzo, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe, were educated, he left for Paris in the early Seventies. After working for Castelbajac in Paris and Cerruti in Italy, he started to manually dye shoes, opening his first Parisian boutique in 1980. He approaches shoes as a surrealist canvas, and like his fellow fashion designers, started from the matter and the decorative elements to create the shoe. The Fox design is a variation on his best-known shoe, the Mouse.

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é–“

MA Ground floor

Ground floor

5. Ma Western fashion has traditionally started from the natural shape of the human body for its creations. According to this vision, the challenge is to closely outline a three-dimensional shape with a two-dimensional fabric to accentuate the body’s shape. Western clothes have a tight fit, they are like a second skin. Japanese clothes, meanwhile, create an added dimension, that feels liberating. The designers of the Land of the Rising Sun use enormous panels of fabric to conceal and camouflage the body. It is their way of consciously bypassing the conventional notions of gender. This idea harks back to the kimono, whereby an uncut piece of fabric is laid on the human body and the remaining fabric is draped around it. The Japanese call this ma, which loosely translates as a space or gap in between two structural parts.

Notwithstanding the fact that Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto are rather hesitant to accept their geographical roots as a defining element in their aesthetic vision and rarely embrace elements of Japanese clothing in their work, they all consider that the kimono provided the groundwork for their designs. Inspired by their own tradition and by Western innovators of the past, such as Poiret, Vionnet and Balenciaga, they create new shapes that emulate these traditions.

Issey Myake first confronted with the world with two-dimensional clothing in 1976, with his “A Piece of Cloth� concept. By draping a simple length of fabric around the 26

body he created an interesting ma or space between the body and the item of clothing. He combined this minimalist approach with the most recent technological advanced synthetic materials that were produced in Japan. The use of such fabrics, like for example folded polyester, combined with innovative construction techniques, allowed Miyake to create and showcase some of the most fantastic designs ever at the end of the Eighties. His Pleats Please line from 1993 was especially successful, launching simpler version of these real artworks, thereby appealing to a wider audience. From 1996 until 1998, he invited artists to collaborate with him and create prints for his clothing. Tom Hawkinson (b. 1960) for example printed body parts on the dresses, letting them move along with the wearer’s body.

Kawakubo and Yamamoto presented their own respective visions on the kimono in the mid-Nineties. In his 1995 kimono collection, Yamamoto paid tribute to his own cultural heritage and to European fashion of the Fifties and Sixties. The geometric shapes and the light-weight garments referred to the latter, which was far removed from the traditional, Japanese versions. Kawakubo presented her homage to the kimono in her 1996 A/W collection. She was inspired by the shape of the kimono but succeeded in stripping any literal references to it by choosing to work in pale velvet with brightly-coloured botanical patterns in the vein of the European Renaissance and Baroque. The candy floss hairstyles of the models who showed the collection were sprinkled with white powder to underscore this reference.

The looks were modernised with black brogues.

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Maison Margiela - which is currently working with John Galliano - continues to be fascinated by the kimono, as is evidenced by the fashion label’s 2015 A/W couture catwalk show. Galliano added a subtle reference to geishas with Pat McGrath’s Yves Klein-blue kabuki make-up as well as presenting kimono-style designs. The black oversized silk dress with stunning kimono painting on the front and a coat on the back, which hung down from the shoulder straps, was especially noteworthy. Volume clearly also was a theme in this collection. Galliano designed a magnificent down dress combined with a meandering fabric, that was partly covered with cling film. His tribute to Martin Margiela, who founded the house of course, refers to another iconic design, with a rectangular, kimono-like structure: the puffa jacket of the 1999 A/W collection. Such oversized puffa jackets and dresses, with a more or less explicit kimono reference, have become very popular with western designers in recent years. Raf Simons has used them in the past and so have Yamamoto and last but not least Alexander McQueen.

The versatile beauty of the kimono has also become an important source of inspiration for other Western designers.

In the European tradition, a woman’s cleavage traditionally has always been an erotic zone. The designers AF Vandevorst instead focused on the Japanese tradition, where the neck is considered seductive, expressing this in its watery green dress from their 2002 S/S collection. All the attention was drawn to the back thanks to some spectacular floral embroidery. Riccardo Tisci’s 2011 S/S collection for Givenchy, meanwhile, paid tribute to Kazuo Ohno, a prominent figure 28

in the Japanese performance art called butoh. The reference to butoh was present, but never literally. Here too, the back, neck and shoulders are accentuated with brightly-coloured structures on the back of the dresses. The unique creations all looked ruggedly seductive as a result. Font (b. 1965), the creative director of the Spanish fashion label Delpozo since 2012 and a former architecture student, has regularly demonstrated his predilection for structured and enveloping volumes that caress the body rather than limit it, in his collections. The first look of his 2016 A/W collection contained an intriguing reference to the obi knot.

Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (b. 1969), better known as Viktor & Rolf play a separate role in this story. Their name is forever linked with their sculptural designs with complex drapery that conceal the body, which is finally swallowed up by it. Their “zen garden� collection or the 2013 A/W couture collection is especially appropriate for this exhibition. It celebrated the twentieth anniversary of their label and their return to couture. During the show, twenty models slowly move across the stage, which is covered with a print of raked sand, clad in black, simple, sculptural dresses, in a state of zen-like meditation. They eventually positioned them in five shrubs, that emulated the famous rock formations in the famous Zen garden of Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto. The organic and often oversized shapes were made of a black, neoprene-like silk. The spaghetti-like strands along the seams of a number of dresses were supposed to imitate grass. The last dress was so huge that it concealed the wearer as well as the hunched model next to her. Ma at its best.

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Exhibition Interim director MMH Ann Vandeput Curator Karolien De Clippel Preparatory research Filep Motwary Productie Modemuseum Hasselt Production Tim Peters Scenografie Base Design Scenography Modemuseum team Vrienden van het Modemuseum vzw Vrijwilligers Schenkers Sara Davidson Paolo Roversi Sponsors & partners Provincie Limburg Vlaamse gemeenschap

Loans from Museums Centraal Museum Utrecht: Anne-Karlijn van Kesteren, Ninke Bloemberg, Martine Kilburn Modemuseum Provincie Antwerpen: Wim Mertens, Danique Klijs Gemeentemuseum Den Haag: Madelief HohĂŠ Groninger Museum: Sue-an van der Zijpp, Jenny Kloostra Tassenmuseum Hendrikje Amsterdam: Leonie Sterenborg

Loans from private collectors Isolde Pringiers Fashion Houses Alexander McQueen: Hongyi Huang Ann Demeulemeester: Astrid Peeters Delpozo: Carla VĂĄzquez Jones, Cristina Merino Dries Van Noten: Jan Vanhoof Givenchy: Guillemette Duzan Iris van Herpen: Bradly Dunn Klerks John Galliano: Olivier Bourgis, Brigitte Pellereau Maison Margiela: Axel Arres Thom Browne: Mari Fujiuchi Undercover: Chieri Hazu, Chiaki Kawata Viktor & Rolf: Marlijn Swan Yohji Yamamoto: Caroline Ponomarenko, Richard Ghionghios Vivienne Westwood: Dolce Cioffo

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