Yohji Yamamoto opened his Fall/Winter 2023 show with a recording of himself singing Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man.” It was not a gesture of vulnerability but of authorship, a reminder that Yamamoto’s work is ultimately about control. In an industry increasingly driven by spectacle and churn, this collection felt deliberate, even austere. Forty years into his career, Yamamoto is not offering novelty. He is offering clarity.
The collection returned to black as the dominant language, with flashes of red and white functioning as punctuation rather than emphasis. Garments followed familiar Yamamoto structures such as bias-cut shirt dresses, layered jackets, and collapsing skirts, but the execution felt sharpened. Leather sculptural elements hardened otherwise fluid shapes. Necklaces made from textile scraps looped onto leather cords suggested a quiet form of resistance. Sustainability here is not a theme. It is practice, embedded into the design process without announcement.
There is no obvious narrative arc, but the presence of the designer is felt throughout. An embroidered self-portrait appears on a zippered shirt, showing Yamamoto with his guitar and hat in hand. It is not branding. It is acknowledgment. The final song, sung in Japanese, told of a man aging with mixed emotions—regret, but also satisfaction. The clothes mirrored that duality. They were imperfect, deliberately so. Hair was mussed. Makeup looked unfinished. Fabrics twisted and hung with precision that masked their complexity.
While other designers return to deconstruction as an aesthetic reference, Yamamoto never left it. His work continues to resist coherence, not for effect, but because life is not coherent. The backs of several jackets carried painterly silk screens, gestures of expression on otherwise restrained silhouettes. Final looks, edged in quiet beading, stripped things back even further. Not minimal, but reduced to essence.
There is nothing retrospective about this collection. Yamamoto is not looking back. He is examining what remains of material, of self, of form, when distraction is removed. In doing so, he delivers one of the season’s most exacting propositions: that fashion, at its most rigorous, requires not more, but less.
Produced by Yohji Yamamoto team
Lighting by Lightlab
Hair by Eugene Souleiman
Make-up by Ana Takahashi
Music by Jiro Amimoto
www.yohjiyamamoto.co.jp
@yohjiyamamotoofficial
Highlights from the Collection
Photos: Daniele Oberrauch Gorunway/Vogue