Yoshikazu Yamagata "Cycles of Life: The Past & Future of Apparel"

Fashion Tech News invites guest supervisors from various fields to present interdisciplinary special features that contemplate the future of fashion and technology. For the first edition of this special series, we welcome Yoshikazu Yamagata, designer of the fashion label writtenafterwards and host of the fashion learning space "coconogacco," to supervise. We are pleased to present five articles on the theme "Cycles of Life: The Past & Future of Apparel."

On March 16th, as part of Tokyo Collection, Yamagata unveiled the installation called "Gassho (合掌)" at the National Art Center, showcasing clothes buried in the soil. This highlights his focus on the cycles of fashion, the connection between materials and human life, elaborating on past, present, and future explorations of fashion.

Dressing as Human Activity

The Intent Behind the Theme "Cycles of Life: The Past & Future of Apparel"

On an intuitive level, we need to once again view the evolution of fashion within the grand scope of history. It's important to pay attention to changes in fashion within short time frames, but now is a time to look at it more broadly. I believe society is currently questioning from various angles what fashion can do.

With issues like protection during the COVID-19 pandemic, the global environment, gender issues, and physical diversity, fashion still has many challenges to tackle. I proposed the theme of this special feature hoping to unearth these aspects.

While I am eager to discuss the future, I also believe history offers many clues. There are aspects of "human activity" obscured by the large capitalist systems of the 20th century. Ideally, I envision technology connected with history and culture. Therefore, for this Fashion Tech News feature, I thought it would be fitting to start by revisiting history from ancient times to pre-20th century capitalism.

Confronting the Environment: Co-creation with Animals, Plants, & Fungi

Originally, a project intended for 2020 was postponed or canceled due to COVID-19, giving me time to reflect on the history of fashion and the fundamental aspects of how clothing materials are made. I began examining the history of sericulture and silk on my own. The central theme, which became the title of the special feature, "Cycles of Life," led me to reconsider the ecosystems involved in fashion.

As I researched how people lived in places where sericulture was practiced in the past, I focused on the famous Gassho-style houses in Shirakawa-go. The Gassho-style architecture naturally arose from the livelihoods there. The first floor was mainly used for living space, while the second and third floors were used for sericulture and making Japanese paper. I also learned that in the basement, they cultivated human waste, leftover food, and silkworm droppings to make gunpowder. In other words, under one thatched roof, people’s lifestyles included the production of animal-based silk, plant-based Japanese paper, and the use of bacteria to produce gunpowder and compost, creating a colossal compost-like cyclical system that existed hundreds of years ago, which I found worth noting.