East London clothing store Hostem has moved into a temporary space in Nichol Street for the spring, with the interior inspired by the sculptures of artist Oscar Tuazon.
Located just a minute’s walk away from their original Shoreditch location in Redchurch Street, the gallery interior at 28 Old Nichol Street has been conceived and built entirely in-house. It is an open-plan design, featuring original Chandigarth Pierre Jeanneret furniture and artwork by Lucien Smith, Kika Karadi and Graham Collins. A freestanding timber frame structure showcases men and women’s garments from the likes of Lanvin, Thom Browne, Loewe, Dries Van Noten, Comme des Garcons, Visvim, Yohji Yamamoto and Geoffrey B. Small.
The menswear boutique, which launched in 2010, has earned a World Architect Festival Award for the design of its Redchurch Street store, which over the course of five years has been expanded by five storeys. The temporary site will be used while the Redchurch Street store undergoes further expansion.
To celebrate the opening of their new space, Hostem are running their first ever Instagram competition, with a prize of £5,000. On visiting the Nichol Street store, entrants are invited to take a picture of the new space and to leave their name, email address and Instagram name in the guestbook. An Instagram user will be chosen from those who upload the picture accompanied with the hashtag #HostemSpringStoreE27HR. The competition closing date is the 9th March 2016.
Few fashion designers are as uncompromising as Yohji Yamamoto. Guided by strict aesthetic principles, the Japanese radical has spent 30 years perfecting his dark, androgynous style. As he says in a new 30 minute documentary to be released this autumn, “I’m not interested in fashion…I’m just interested in how to cut the clothing.”
Staunchly private, for a few short months in 2009, Yamamoto let the cameras observe his Y-3 Spring/Summer 2010 collection taking shape, from initial design through to show styling and PR. With measured gravitas, Yohji Yamamoto: This is My Dream is a portrait of a grand master, whose musings on fashion, creativity and life have fuelled a global empire. Watch and learn.
Yohji Yamamoto: This is My Dream will be released on DVD in September AW11 and is available from Y-3 stores. thisismydreamthefilm.com
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.
When Japanese visionaries Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto stormed the catwalks in the early Eighties they redefined fashion. The androgyny of their architectural shapes not only blew apart how women in Europe dressed, but succeeded in turning fashion into art.
Thirty years on and Japanese fashion continues to challenge Western notions of beauty and the Barbican’s new exhibition, ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ charts the history and impact of the country’s inimitable style.
As Kate Bush, Head of Barbican Art Galleries says: “The tight silhouettes of Western couture were jettisoned for new fluid shapes. Out went the magnificent ornament and extravagant techniques of the post-war tradition and in came a stark, monochrome palette and an entirely new decorative language – holes, rips, frays and tears – emerging from the stuff of fabric itself.”
An epic journey through Japanese fashion history, featuring over 100 beautiful pieces by labels such as Comme des Garcons and Junya Watanabe – courtesy of the Kyoto Costume Institute – as well as catwalk footage and archive interviews, the exhibition dazzles the senses. Spanning the grand masters to the new radicals of Japanese design, it’s the story of an avant-garde fashion culture where breathtaking beauty and innovation are all part of the same rapid beating heart.
‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ is at the Barbican Centre until 6 February 2010. Barbican.org/JapaneseFashion
Images by Lyndon Douglas. Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard.
This season, Yohji Yamamoto has created a Y-3 collection that returns to his avant-garde roots. Asymmetrical kilt skirts, big knit one-pieces and zipped-up jumpsuits all recall the Yamamoto of old, one set on both breaking and applying the traditions of his native Japan.
We love the collections’ brooding, moody and functional feel – T-shirts and coats read: “33 With You” and “23 Years In Prison”. This melancholic, prisoner of love theme has been brilliantly translated onto the small screen for a short fashion film starring brooding French footballer Zinedine Zidane, and a huge model clan. Its tough, heady and undeniably urban.
Watch it here….
Creative Direction: Lloyd & Co.
Still Photography: Alasdair McLellan
Cinematography: Theo Stanley / New Mountain
Editing: Frederic Taxi
Styling: Nicola Formichetti
Music: David Salom
Hair & Make-Up: Didier Malige & Gucci Westman
Location: Pier 54, Hudson River Park – New York City
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