Yohji, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Looser Fit (Yohji Yamamoto Thread) - Page 26

'The Precipice' by Collier defines Brasilia’s architecture

The new Yohji Yamamoto (Y-3) Spring/Summer 2012 campaign by Collier Schorr takes its cue from the experimental city of Brasilia. Portraits are collaged with xeroxes of archival Brasilia, to suggest a delicate balance between the body and the many ways it is contained.

'The Precipice', Schorr's fictitious travelogue, leads us further into Brasilia's dramatic landscape of 20th century modernist architecture. In the campaign concrete structures that loom all around Brasilia read like excavated ruins from a future civilization.

Brasilia, 1960, was a city of uncertainty. A new social experience installed by a government anxious to establish its reputation as a democracy. At the heart of this planned utopia was the pursuit of newness. Collier Schorr's images for Y-3 are a meditation on the sense of otherness that evolves out of this progress, the unnerving bond between human beings and their environment.

In the accompanying mood film, the female narrator remarks "If it is a shore it has long ago been emptied of what lies past its edge.” She speaks to us of the warmth of surfaces, along with her fears and desires to connect with her surroundings; a yearning so real that the city appears no longer as just a collection of concrete buildings, tunnels and roadways, but a living body.

'The Precipice' is a film of layers: from the opening act that introduces us to a story-within-a story to the projected landscape planted both behind and directly over its actors. The film's soundtrack, itself a densely woven tapestry, is cobbled together from various sources; field recordings, old sci-fi films, and excerpts from The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski.

“I was inspired by the androgyny of Yohji Yamanoto’s designs to translate the clothing’s dualities onto screen and image. I was playing with a multitude of influences for the S/S 2012 campaign, inspired by the modernist literature and architecture that is in itself a fusion of political and architectural mantras, both dreamy and concrete.” - Collier Schorr.

The result is an over-arching communication campaign that translates into still images and a short mood film, followed by an updated brand website design, all released globally February 2012.