Yohji Yamamoto – The Master

His peers are long gone. His craft is a vanishing art. But Yohji Yamamoto high fashion's master tailor is still making clothes for the ages.

- By Noah Johnson. Photographs by Gareth McConnell

Yamamoto's headquarters in Paris sits in a prestigious-looking six-story stone building on a narrow street in the bustling east end of Le Marais. The windows are frosted and there are no obvious markings on the exterior. But when you swing open the large door and enter, there is an unmistakable Yohji-ness present, even in the sparsely appointed, mostly concrete foyer. It's as if you'd walked into a Parisian salon in the '20s or an American bowling alley in the '80s: You're enveloped in a haze of cigarette smoke. This, I thought, must mean that Yohji is here.

Indeed, he was. In a back corner of the sprawling ground-floor showroom, the godfather of avant-garde fashion sat at a small, round table with a few associates from his Tokyo office, quietly smoking a cigarette. Racks of clothing-most in his signature black-filled the space, along with tables swarming with buyers and sales agents. Two days before, this room had been converted into a runway where Yamamoto presented his latest collection, the men's autumn-winter 2023 line. As always, the show was packed. He's one of the few designers who draws not just the usual industry insiders or celebrity gapers but black-clad hordes of devoted fans. These are Yamamoto's murder of crows, or karasu-zoku (crow tribe), the Japanese term assigned to them in the '80s, when his fame and influence reached its first fever pitch.

Yamamoto, who is 79, has always been a rebel, unconventional and uncompromising at his core, but he remains the creative force behind a significant global fashion brand, and with the Paris Fashion Week show and after-party behind him, business had commenced. The showroom was as bustling as it would have been in the '80s or '90s. Seated facing out into the lively room, Yamamoto appeared to be conducting an orchestra of commerce, the cigarette his baton.