There are few designers whose work transcends the cyclical nature of fashion. Yohji Yamamoto, now in his eighties, is one of them. His Fall/Winter 2024 women’s collection, shown in Paris, felt like both a continuation and an intimate revelation, a poetic meditation on time, memory, and the quiet defiance that has underscored his career.
The show’s final gesture was a study in simplicity and depth: four pairs of models swapped their long black coats, turning them inside out to reveal deep purple quilted linings. The shifts were subtle yet profound, each lining stitched in a different rhythm, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, like coded messages waiting to be deciphered. The act of exchange suggested communion, a silent conversation between wearers, but also a reminder of the concealed emotions and histories we carry within us.
Music has always played a pivotal role in Yamamoto’s storytelling, and this season was no exception. At least one of the songs on the soundtrack was performed by the designer himself, its lyrics steeped in nostalgia and melancholy. After the show, he spoke candidly: “Inspiration comes out naturally because I’m getting old, so I’m rushing.” Age, for Yamamoto, is not a limitation but a driving force, a reason to create with even greater urgency.
Much like his men’s collection earlier this year, outerwear took center stage. But while his menswear show toyed with convention, introducing puffers that felt almost subversive in their normalcy, this women’s collection remained true to his signature language. Swaddling silhouettes, asymmetrical constructions, integrated scarves twisting around the body, each piece was a masterclass in controlled deconstruction. Patchworked corsets appeared throughout, not to sculpt the figure but to draw fabric closer to it, emphasizing a tactile intimacy between garment and wearer.
Despite their complexity, Yamamoto’s coats never stray into costume. They are lived-in, wearable, they belong to the city, to the streets of Paris or New York, where one could easily imagine his woman moving through the world, unburdened yet deeply intentional. Flat shoes reinforced this grounded sensibility, lending even the most elaborate compositions an air of effortless pragmatism.
Elsewhere, geometric embellishments in white and purple disrupted the black expanse of wool and felt, while tangled cords sketched abstract patterns across the torso. There is always a painterly quality to his work, as though each piece is an ongoing dialogue between fabric and form, structure and dissolution.
In an industry obsessed with reinvention, Yamamoto remains steadfast in his refusal to change for the sake of change. His work is timeless not because it ignores the passage of time, but because it exists outside of it. His collections bleed into one another, seasons dissolving into years, into decades, forming a body of work that resists the ephemeral nature of fashion.
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Highlights from the Collection
