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By Lisa Hart
POSTED March 15, 2011
Buzz Worthy Book: Yohji Yamamoto's Autobiography: MY DEAR BOMB
DESIGNER NEWS
Yohji Yamamoto led the Japanese fashion wave of the 1980s and 1990s into the new millennium. In October 2009, after a series
of bad investments, Yamamoto Inc. went bankrupt; by the end of that year the designer had inaugurated a new business and a
complete reevaluation of his direction.
My Dear Bomb ($28.87) is an outcome of this transition moment. Coauthored with Ai Mitsuda, this carefully and beautifully written
autobiography (with biographical interpolations by friends and collaborators) seamlessly combines extended meditations on
clothing and life with Yamamoto's memories and anecdotes, in short, concise paragraphs.
Throughout its pages, we encounter Yamamoto as a tough realist unburdened by disingenuousness ("I am, in fact, a man who
may turn heartless in an instant; I desire only to settle each and every score immediately"); and, of course, as a great designer
blessed with unerring instinct for his materials ("How does the cloth want to drape, to sway, to fall? If one keeps these things in
mind and looks very carefully, the fabric itself begins to speak").
Illustrated with drawings by Yamamoto, this open-hearted meditation offers a take on the autobiography form as imaginative as the
designer's fashion ware. A retrospective show of Yamamoto's work is on view at London's Victoria and Albert Museum from
March 12 - July 10, 2011.
of bad investments, Yamamoto Inc. went bankrupt; by the end of that year the designer had inaugurated a new business and a
complete reevaluation of his direction.
My Dear Bomb ($28.87) is an outcome of this transition moment. Coauthored with Ai Mitsuda, this carefully and beautifully written
autobiography (with biographical interpolations by friends and collaborators) seamlessly combines extended meditations on
clothing and life with Yamamoto's memories and anecdotes, in short, concise paragraphs.
Throughout its pages, we encounter Yamamoto as a tough realist unburdened by disingenuousness ("I am, in fact, a man who
may turn heartless in an instant; I desire only to settle each and every score immediately"); and, of course, as a great designer
blessed with unerring instinct for his materials ("How does the cloth want to drape, to sway, to fall? If one keeps these things in
mind and looks very carefully, the fabric itself begins to speak").
Illustrated with drawings by Yamamoto, this open-hearted meditation offers a take on the autobiography form as imaginative as the
designer's fashion ware. A retrospective show of Yamamoto's work is on view at London's Victoria and Albert Museum from
March 12 - July 10, 2011.
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