Dear ChangeFashion,

As promised, here is a post on the exhibition ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ at the Barbican Gallery in London, which still runs until February 6th 2011. The exhibition gives an overview of avant-garde Japanese fashion from 1980 until now, exploring this via different themes. Here is an overview of what I liked and saw:

* The exhibition starts with an excerpt from ‘In Praise of Shadows’, a short book by Japanese author and novelist Junichiro Tanizaki. The booklet is divided in 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. I can only reccomend you to read the book, very heavy sometimes but also very witty!

* I loved the room with the photographs of Naoya Hatakeyama on Comme des Garçons garments, which were placed next to the actual garment on doll. It showed very nicely the simplicity and the extraordinary shapes of her designs, even unworn. The images capture Mrs. Kawakubo’s interest in asymmetry, flatness and form.

Sorry, but it was not allowed to take pictures so I took some from the exhibition’s catalogue.

* There were several documentaries in the exhibition, one was a documentaru by Wim Wenders on Yohji Yamamoto ‘On Notebooks and Cities’, I enjoyed reseeing it, my favourite part is this one. Go to 5′30″, where you’ll see Mr. Yamamoto during the re-opening of one of his stores in Japan, trying to put up the perfect ‘Yamamoto’ signature at the entrance of the new store!

* In 1994, Comme des Garçons invited artist Cindy Sherman to make a series of advertising for her brand, the pictures were folded into posters and used in a direct mailing campaign, breaking alsmost every rule of conventional fashion photography and were the clothes are on the background, even not clear of this were CdG garments being used.

It was great to also see copies of the legendary ‘Six’ Magazine, published between ‘88 and ‘94 by CdG. Six stands fro the ’sixth sense’. The magazine had little text content and almost no clothing was featured, instead it had artwork by Gilbert&George, Jean Cocteau,… The main aim of the magazine was to dissemate the spirit of CdG. (Unfortunately, it was not allowed to take pictures in the exhibition…)

* There were only three outfits from Jun Takahashi’s collection and each garment had a different wallpaper with the motif from the garments. A simple but very nice way to represent mr. Takahashi’s aesthetics, fusing luxurious fabrics and trimmings with an anarchic punk style.

* There was also a room with pieces from the next generation Japanese designers. I was of course very happy to see a piece from Mikio Sakabe’s collection. It was not allowed to take pictures but somehow this picture appeared on my phone

There were also very nice pieces from Akira Naka and Taro Horiuchi!