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

[StevenE]

Y-3 this spring is really beautiful. I love the vibrant jackets

I like them too. Esp the green one (not pictured here).

But but but

The prices. Utterly mad. I think an asking price of £400 for a diffusion line item this far removed from the mainline - in both aesthetic and production processes - is a bit outrageous. I can't begin to speculate at the mark up but £185 - £250 would seem appropriate but still expensive.

And good grief at the £1,250 Y-3 jackets. Oh and the £800 shorts to match. They're cool-looking, they really are. But they aren't that amazing and you can buy incredible, incredible, incredible mainline YYPH jackets at full-price in the UK for significantly less. Mainline shorts usually cost a bit less too. This ensamble, with the matching trainers, would cost more than £2000 to put together. I'd say even half of that total would be pushing it. It's just staggering, and not in a good way.

I get that these are statement pieces, but I don't see who the pricing benefits. Y-3 seem to price the nice items out of their main market, while seeming to hope that people attracted by the statement pieces will settle for tacky **** (I'm not a YYPH purist but some of Y-3's cheaper items are just repellant), priced at actually sane prices. I wish Y-3 would reign in the low and high ends a bit more. Produce strong items at appropriate diffusion prices, rather than go all out on a few impressive but ambitiously-priced pieces while simultaneously being content to slap a Y3 logo on an ordinary cotton polo and charge £185 for it.

// as a side-note, I'd say Y-3 manages to strike the right balance in the trainer department. Expensive but not unreasonably so, and the out-and-out failures tend to be the items that are over-ambitious, which is preferable to the utterly lame track/tee monstrosities that are typically the apparel section's bigger disappointments.

 

[Benesyed]

Yeah, not sure how the pricing works out. Probably needs to subsidize adidas marketing. I do not have any hands on experience with the actual quality of the materials though.

 

[StevenE]

And just to temper the negativity, I think this item makes great use of the floral prints (which are lovely, but not so lovely as to elevate the price of any item on which they appear by 100%, which seem to be the line's typical strategy). These are offered at a fairly reasonable asking price though (£140 - expensive but hardly competing with the mainline), and are pleasant.


My favourite item from the new Y-3 collection is this:

 

[brad-t]

Is Y-3 really a diffusion line? Has almost nothing in common with the Yohji aesthetic. Seems more like something that's parallel than a literal step down.

 

[Benesyed]

There's a fair amount of borrowing and inspiration from yohji. Some of the pants from this past fall and some of this seasons long blazer/coats

Also by request

YYPH AW12
KVA
KVA
Rokin

 

[Auburn]

I'd agree with Brad. Y-3 has been doing its own thing for a while now and has never really been about being a diffusion line a la Silent.

 

[dantebykiko]

y-3 its not diffusion line. it has own structure, production and customer. y-3 show its big event in new york, just look at how many celebrities attend it. the high prices are due to product been "exclusive" as we discuss at least 3-4 times here.

@bene this doesn't look natural and effortless. had + glasses don't match(i think you need bigger brim), also something with the trousers hems, the stacking its bad. IMO.

 

[Benesyed]

Thanks for the feedback kiko. Defintely agree on the hat being too small and the break of the pants (though it does not bother me too too much). Not much I can do about the latter without really altering the pants and losing a cool design detail they have

I might pick up a new hat from borsalino down the line. This was just something I tried on for fun

 

[Caveat]

Can they not alter the pants and save the hem line? Can't see what's going on with them, but sometimes it's possible.

I like the hat. I hate the glasses, but you know that. Also would like the coat better if you weren't so nice. Someone posted the Exorcist poster in the other thread and that's the attitude I expect from that coat.

Oh, and by the way, in case it hadn't occurred to you, the detailing on the pants is pointless if they stack like that because nobody can see it.

 

[Benesyed]



Can they not alter the pants and save the hem line? Can't see what's going on with them, but sometimes it's possible.

There is a piece of string around the bottom opening that you can tie to adjust the width of the opening. It runs inside the fabric itself. Much like the tie for sweatpant waists.

 

[Caveat]

I'm sure they could cut it higher and sew the bottom part back on. It would just create a seam, but it would probably be the lesser of two evils (the other being stacking.)

 

[davidlee388]

I like the hat. I hate the glasses, but you know that. Also would like the coat better if you weren't so nice. Someone posted the Exorcist poster in the other thread and that's the attitude I expect from that coat.

This is the funniest thing I've read in a long while

@Bene that AW12 blazer does fit you pretty well. No comment about the rest. You were expressing a change of YY aesthetics to a slimmer silhouette to suit your hospital curriculum. You are not seriously wearing this outfit to the hospital lectures/clinical sessions??

I felt like joining the Y-3 discussion ( used to be a big fan, big enough fan to have a 100% Y-3 wardrobe ) but like Kiko said it's been done many times so I will leave it. All I would say is I miss the pre-SS12 Y-3 days when true " Exclusive " Y-3 were made in Japan and DID have a strong YY silhouette.

 

[volatile]

I have such ambiguous feelings about YY... the more vintage / early- to mid-century looking stuff, like the runway suit fit Surver posted or the khaki shirt on the previous page, blow my mind, and I constantly find myself scouring eBay for pieces. But I can't get the excited about the more gothninja looks, even as I can (intellectually) appreciate the aesthetic, and Y-3 and his collabs (particularly with adidas) are almost entirely awful, in my opinion.

I've never felt so conflicted about a single designer before (except maybe McQueen)... I suppose that's probably a testament to Mr Yamamoto's eclecticism if anything.

 

[brad-t]

Faust and I have an engaging discussion on what the purpose of a fashion collection is regarding Yohji Yamamoto Womenswear Fall 2013.

(I thought the collection was great, even if it was disjointed. I love the powder blue looks and the suits especially.)

 

[dantebykiko]

indeed its all over the place. i can see many old stuff in there.. ss93.. aw96.. ss00, aw03, ss05, aw08. the theme its not as strong as some of his past collection but he also do collection as this when its divided into "stages". the problem i found with this its that there are not enough looks per each category to tell the full story.