Japanese fashion visionary Yohji Yamamoto deserves an exhibition that’s as conceptual as his designs. It’s apt then that Wapping Project has served up such an esoteric installation for the exhibition, Making Waves. Part of the Victoria & Albert museum’s major retrospective, the show comprises an oversized white silk wedding dress made with bamboo crinoline from Yamamoto’s A/W 1998 collection that hangs, solitary, in the Boiler House. The piece makes an understated statement that’s typically Yamamoto.
Meanwhile, over at the Wapping Project Bankside the works of the seven photographers who produced imagery for Yamamoto’s celebrated catalogues go on display. The stellar line-up features Nick Knight, Peter Lindbergh, Craig McDean, Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, Max Vadukul and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Though the photographers are familiar, the images themselves star the kind of women Yamamoto is drawn to – strong types rarely seen on the pages of the glossies. A man after our own sartorial heart.
Yohji Making Waves is at Wapping Project, E1 until 14 July 2011 and Yohji’s Women is at Wapping Project Bankside, SE1 until 14 May 2011.
www.thewappingproject.com
www.thewappingprojectbankside.com
Images courtesy of the Wapping Project, Imogen Eveso and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.