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1980s
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Japanese avant-garde

Kawakubo, Yamamoto and Miyake each tested familiar expectations of clothing. Their different uses of space, surface and proportion challenged the smoothly finished silhouette.

Unconventional volumeAsymmetry and altered structureExperimental relationships between cloth and body

About Japanese avant-garde

Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake proposed different relationships between cloth and the body. Asymmetry, space around the wearer and textile experiments challenged expectations of a smoothly finished, figure-following garment. Kawakubo’s distressed knits of autumn/winter 1982–83, for example, reconsidered lace through deliberately irregular holes. Miyake’s experiments in form and movement and Yamamoto’s altered proportions offered other approaches. “Japanese avant-garde” is useful here as a historical grouping, not a claim that the designers shared one national aesthetic.

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The Museum at FIT: Japan Fashion NowFIT Fashion History Timeline: 1980–1989The Met: Miyake, Kawakubo and YamamotoJumper — original sourceMatching RISD museum image and CC0 declarationCoat — original source
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