Yohji Yamamoto's all-black Paris debut was mocked, then won
Yohji Yamamoto's all-black Paris debut was mocked, then it won. He brought his clothes to Paris in 1981, the same season as Rei Kawakubo: torn, oversized, all-black silhouettes on pale-faced models, staged to an amplified heartbeat. The press did not know what to do with it, and called the Japanese designers 'bag ladies' and worse. The clothes won anyway. Black became the uniform of fashion, and 'anti-fashion' a school of its own.