New Icons: Yohji Yamamoto’s Anti-Origami
Along with His Spring/Summer 2016 Menswear Collection, Yohji Yamamoto's Brown Paper Bag Disrupts the Corporate Dress Code
New Icons celebrates the stories behind particularly notable pieces from this season.
It is hard to believe that, after 40 years of exploring the boundaries of tailoring, Yohji Yamamoto is still trying things for the first time. And yet, it is this type of experimental naiveté that has made the Japanese designer such a wonderful antidote against the obvious for all these decades. “This is the first time I tried a very tight suit on the body,” Yamamoto confessed to after his Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection debuted in Paris, “Very interesting and challenging. Because if you do not do it seriously, it can only look businessman.” On his first try with the fitted suit, Yamamoto has already perfumed a stagnating market with his wisdom: if you don’t take things seriously enough, you can end up looking… Well, serious.Continuing his “black collar” take on the office uniform—adding green jacquard to a two-piece suit, Abstract Expressionist shoulder panels to blazers, and a paint marker drawing of a skeleton walking its dog where needed—Yamamoto has also delivered his answer to the briefcase: a brown paper bag. Emblazoned with splashy calligraphy that reads "Your Junk Email Box," the gesture is unapologetically brash, yet useful. A locked attaché is a good way to store valuables, but a bag that looks like it could be wrapped around a beer bottle is even more low-profile. Such a Trojan horse shows the signature attitude of a designer who plays so much, while still paying homage to the subtlety of construction and silhouette. As Yamamoto has demonstrated time and again, perfectly tailored black clothing is the best way to say, "You can take a look, but I'm really busy." Discretion and cool have always had a kind of on-again-off-again relationship. And do not even bother with the orthodox notion that leather is more "refined" than paper. If the haters are going to hate, let them send this and all those other ideas to the spam folder. It's. Chill.
Of course, this all isn't . Let's stop right there. Even the most crumpled departures from luxury do not come without their predecessors. For Fall/Winter 2012 Jil Sander released the Vasari Bag, a brown paper bag for men with the company logo on one side. However, it would be a mistake to conflate the two. While Sander's Vasari was a crisp ode to conceptualism, Yamamoto's is messy and fraught with emotion. It really gives a shit, and wants to be heard. It is like anti-origami, and any touch of the machine—such as the perforated edges—has been outweighed by the hand of man and his desire. The bag foretells the sentiment of Yamamoto looks to come, pairing well with a baseball cap that reads "Corporate Motherfucker" from the Fall/Winter 2016 runway show.
Not Yet a Woman: 9 Writers On The Fashion Essential To Coming-of-Age Films Makeover Montage, Teen Sexuality, Awkward Phases Simply put, formation is fascinating. We never grow out of the allure of coming-of-age stories. While certain themes—self-doubt, sexual awakening, familial tension—are recurring, another appeal of the genre is how intently an adolescent character lays claim to their environment, and not just with their actions, but how they choose to present themselves. Their clothes are manifestations of innocence as it fumbles towards experience: Juicy Couture in , and their defiant Levi’s 501s, Claire Danes’ love life taking off in angel wings in Baz Luhrmann’s . 
Youth Mode: From URL to IRL A Conversation with Elise By Olsen, Editor of Recens Paper In an industry obsessed with youth, Oslo-based editor Elise By Olsen has the ultimate asset. When she was just 13 she founded , a fashion magazine devoted to youth culture. Two years later, her magazine’s progressive ideals and post-digital aesthetic are at peak relevance in a season of fashion collections offering their interpretations of androgyny, individuality, and every possible permutation of youth subculture. 
Tokyo’s Men About Town Influential Fashion Bloggers Tokyo Dandy Share a Glimpse Inside the Japanese Capital Home to an incredibly dense concentration of underground subcultures, Tokyo requires a filter to be understood from afar. Founded eight years ago by British ex-pat Dan Bailey and Okinawa native Joe Kazuaki, Tokyo Dandy is a bilingual window in the chaotic landscape of the fashion, music, and club scenes in the Japanese capital. After starting the website in reaction to the absence of media coverage for cultural events, they have become the international fashion community’s de facto “in” to Tokyo nightlife.