Yohji, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Looser Fit (Yohji Yamamoto Thread)

When did women begin to put their hands in their pockets? Did it start with Marlene Dietrich? We can be sure, at least, that it started after women began wearing men's clothes, and also that in the current age that masculine pose is fully accepted, considered just another fashion. Nevertheless, I find I still like to attach pockets.

When I think of men posing with their hands in their pockets, I think of James Dean and Robert Mitchum. The pose suggests a man living on the borders and with ties to the underworld, it suggests rebellion, scorn, resistance, and a certain skepticism. One might be in Shinjuku, Paris or New York, the country does not matter. Take a stroll down an alley in a seedy district and a shady character will approach from the other direction. Jammed in his pockets, his hands will already be clenched, ready for battle. In the next instance he pulls a hand out of his pocket, armed with his key chain.

As a child, my pockets were for storing treasures. I would stuff them with all sorts of things. Even today my pockets serve in place of a bag. Walking around with anything more than a wallet is unthinkable to me. In my right pocket I put my cash, in my left pocket I have my handkerchief, lighter, and keys. If my jacket has a breast pocket to hold my passport, then I can even do without an overnight bag.

Men's pockets are boldly practical. I have some heavy-duty wear that has thirteen pockets, and I have been wearing it for years. There is simply nothing that beats it in terms of practicality. One can live in clothes like this. One can set out on a journey.

The pockets on clothes for everyday use must comfortably hold a wallet, they must not be poorly placed and require one to grope in order to access them. They fail, too, if the overall silhouette is disrupted when the hands are put in the pockets.

The placement, shape, number, opening, angle and depth of a pocket depend on the purpose of the garment. In general, if the relative weight of the cloth rests close to the stomach and the fabric falls well, a pocket can be successfully placed anywhere. To tell the truth, quite often while doing the preliminary stitching on a garment I have snipped open a pocket hole with a scissor to find the garment naturally respond with a wide-mouthed grin - the pocket has found its home.

Strictly speaking, just as there is such a thin as the ideal spot for a button, there is also the perfect place for the pocket. A minimalist approach to this feature would be to forgo the angled approach and instead simply slice parallel to the body and attach a pocket.

I read somewhere, perhaps in a medical book, that people's grief gathers in their ankles. Grief, sometimes dating back decades, sinks towards the earth and gathers in the ankles. People believe that they have gotten over those sad events, and they press forward as usual in pursuit of their own backs as they carry some idealized vision of who they are. It is all rather paradoxical: they carry with them, in each and every step, the very grief that they believe they have trampled underfoot.

There are women who have passed through the gates of hell and learned of both the bitter and sweet in life. At times grief will rise from them only to then fade away, like burning incense. The scent never clongs to her. These women are the truly well bred, the truly noble, and it is to them that I would like to offer that perfected pocket designed with the single slice of the razor.

No matter how elegant the evening dress, I want very much to attach a pocket. If it has no pocket, it means that the woman will have to carry a handbag. And with that handbag comes the silly concern that it might be stolen. An inconvenience is there from the very start.

One who has bought a tremendously expensive diamond necklace worries about it being stolen at a gala event and so wears instead on that day an imitation. Nowhere do we see more clearly the painful absurdities of a human being's desire to possess things. When we desire some expensive item, we ar eovercharged for it; when we go to sell that item, the offers are low. The characterization might be overly reductive, but the fact remains that our desire to possess things always leads in the end to our being forcefully parted from them at a loss.

And so come to me with them in your pockets, everything important to you in your pockets.