It must be one of his many qualities that Yohji Yamamoto is the kind of fashion designer who appeals to people, like me, who are not dedicated followers of fashion. One reason for that could be that he avoids the characteristics of catwalk culture or couture that put us off: too expressive, too ostentatious. You sense that he makes clothing for real people rather than divas. Classic Yohji clothes are relaxed and durable, so that the wearer looks stylish but not preening. And it's not just his clothes that appeal, it's him: his demeanour, his focus, his talent. I confess that I have never bought a shred of his clothing, and yet he is one of the designers, of any discipline, that I most admire.
Until our thoughts turned to Japan for more tragic reasons, London had been in the midst of celebrating the country's creativity. Over the weekend the Victoria & Albert Museum opened a retrospective of Yohji's work, which falls hot on the heels of the Barbican's recent survey of Japanese fashion, in which he featured prominently. Both shows mark 30 years since he and then partner Rei Kawakubo first took Paris by storm. Well, Yohji didn't quite take it by storm – his all-black collection was dubbed by one acerbic critic "post-Hiroshima" chic – but he caused a synaptic shudder, like Tim Burton walking on to the set of Dynasty (which launched earlier that year, just to remind you what 1981 was like). Along with Kawakubo and Issey Miyake, Yohji revolutionised pattern-cutting, abandoning figure-hugging forms and introducing a more abstract relationship to the body.
In his book Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes remarked that in Japan "sexuality is in sex, not elsewhere" (as opposed to the USA, where he felt that "sex is everywhere, except in sexuality"). Whether or not it remains true, there is something of that observation in Yohji's clothing. He has always eschewed overt sexuality and what he calls "doll-like" femininity. From the very beginning, he has sought to dissolve gender distinctions, dressing women in trousers, suits or military-style fatigues, and men, in one collection in 2004, in elegant kaftan-like skirts. His cuts are loose, in part, he says, to protect women's sexuality – to shield their bodies "from men's eyes or a cold wind". His androgynous styling concentrates attention on the face, where the real sexual allure resides.
That is not to suggest that his clothes aren't sexy. There's a short navy dress here from autumn/winter 1983 that exposes the back and is fastened with big buttons that almost defy you to undo them. And although this wool gabardine number looks almost black, you know it's not because Yohji's blacks are like bottomless wells. He has always been obsessed with black. I once earnestly tried to investigate why so much of what I encountered in Japanese product design was white. After many philosophical answers about how it represented kaizen, or a state of limitless potential, the best I could conclude was that it was a way of focusing on the important stuff. Yohji uses black in the same way. He feels that colours can distract from the nature of the material: the texture, the hang, the way it sways to your walk.
Black was also the colour that perpetually adorned Yohji's widowed mother when he was growing up. His father was killed in the war, so he went off to study fashion in order to help her dressmaking business (having originally studied law). And it was the postwar lack of food, he believes, that made him a pint-sized man, and inspired him to compensate by cutting his clothes big and baggy. Critics will talk about the spatial implications of this leaving air between the skin and the fabric, and how the wearer feels freer and unrestricted. But it would be rather sweet if it was all to compensate for his own diminutive frame. I won't be calling him pint-sized to his face, of course – he's a black belt in karate.
Though Yohji's clothes are designed and made in Japan, he resists them being labelled "Japanese". They certainly embody elements of Japanese aesthetics, such as wabi-sabi, the adherence to imperfection – his cuts are often asymmetrical and his edges occasionally unfinished. But his clothes are steeped in European influences, drawn from historical sources such as August Sander's early 20th-century photographs of anonymous workers. If they are Japanese it is mainly because of the local artisans with whom he insists on working. That refusal to outsource to the global economy has not made things easy for him. Early last year he was declared bankrupt, though the company was later salvaged. As he says here in the exhibition catalogue, "a Japanese man's hand has become the most expensive in the world".
It is hands that are the stars of Wim Wenders's cinematic portrait of Yohji, made in 1989. Feeling fabric between fingers, cutting it and pinning it, or busily chain-smoking. Yohji works like a sculptor, following the logic of the fabric and shaping it around a body rather than drawing it out first. It's a portrait of craftsmanship that is instinctive and also inimitable. Do you have to keep your ideas secret? asks Wenders. Aren't you worried that someone will steal your language? They can't do that, says Yohji – which sounds both supremely confident and also dated in a world where the transposition from catwalk to Topshop takes a few weeks.
I'm slightly nostalgic for the period in Wenders's movie. My generation probably knows Yohji Yamamoto mainly through diffusion lines such as Y-3, his collaboration with Adidas. It's the kind of mainstream streetwear fare that every fashion label churns out once it reaches a certain size, and has little to do with Yohji the artist. Some of the most recent work also appears to be trying much harder, and seems to have lost some of the earlier clarity. Or let's say that it's a touch theatrical for my tastes. There's a piece in the show from spring/summer 2011, a printed gabardine suit with high-collared shirt, that's strictly in fashionista territory. One of the things I admired about Yohji's work was that it was approachable, not too new, or, as Wenders puts it in the movie, "new and old at the same time". It's a rare designer who can achieve that quality.
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