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

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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.

PROFILE

Yoshikazu Yamagata

Fashion designer. Graduated in 2005 from the Women's Wear course of the Fashion Design Department at Central Saint Martins. In April 2007, he established his own brand "writtenafterwards." In 2015, he was the first Japanese person nominated for the LVMH Prize. Besides his activities as a designer, he hosts "coconogacco," a space for experimenting with and learning about fashion expressions. In 2016, he taught Japan's first class at the Fashion Design Department of Central Saint Martins, and since 2018, has been teaching at Tokyo University of the Arts. In 2019, he was selected for the BOF 500 by The Business 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.