What becomes immediately apparent when you walk into ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ is the undeniable influence modern Japanese designers have on the industry.
Asymmetric sculptural forms, loose fitting clothes, pleating and folding are just some of the techniques applied by the likes of Rei Kawakubo (for Comme des Garcons), Yohjo Yamamoto and Issey Miyake among others.
Look to Australian designers like Dion Lee or Michael Lo Sordo and you can see the origins in Japanese design whether it’s thoughtful construction, innovative textiles or graphic design.
But the influence goes far beyond our shores, with labels like Calvin Klein and Donna Karen who spear headed the paired back American sports wear trend in the 90s clearly walking in the footsteps of Kawakubo and Yamamoto.
Do I even need to mention black + Melbourne?!
Beyond influence, this exhibition is important because it reflects back to us the way we dress in an every day sense. There have been some major fashion exhibitions hit out shores in the last couple of years, think the Valentino retrospective at GOMA or the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition currently showing at the NGV here in Melbourne.
One of the major differences between Europeans designers of the last 30 years and Japanese is that the complex yet simple construction techniques have filtered down in a way that has really been unprecedented in modern fashion design.
You can walk into any urban or street wear shop and see asymmetrical hemlines abound. It is because of the simplicity that these trends have been adopted in a mass sense.
