Yohji Yamamoto Quietly Revives His First Menswear Brand
Legendary Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto was first and foremostly a womenswear brand. Yamamoto learned the art of tailoring from his mother, a bespoke dressmaker, and applied the skills she passed down to him to creating his own women's garments.
Menswear wasn't exactly a priority for the young Yamamoto but seven years after founding his first brand, Y's, Yamamoto debuted his menswear line, Y's for Men in 1979.
Both imprints continued for decades, repositioned by Yamamoto as proto-diffusion lines after introducing eponymous labels (Yohji Yamamoto and Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme) as his mainline collections, until Y's for Men was put on hiatus in 2010, the year after Yamamoto's company survived "civil rehabilitation" (a Japanese term for bankruptcy-adjacent financial trouble).
Many trials and tribulations later, Yamamoto is still going, his company is healthy, and its diffusion lines are plentiful: we're talking S'yte, New Era, Ground Y, and even home goods, all offered through Yamamoto's fairly young international web store
So what's one more?
In July 2023, Yamamoto will reintroduce Y's for Men into the fold, bringing his brand full-circle. Some of its debut designs were quietly mixed into the designer's most recent runway show in Paris, demonstrating their inherent mutability.
This was Yamamoto's first menswear brand, remember, so you have to imagine that the venerable designer has more than a little nostalgia for it.
Y's for Men was always a little more direct, a little less complicated than Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme. As the latter label began experimenting with artistic prints, atypical textiles, and oddball statement pieces (think tearaway pant-style denim jeans with removable suspenders), Y's for Men reliably provided wearable blazers, crisp cotton shirts, and cotton twill trousers in Yamamoto's signature shade of black.
Vintage Y's for Men can be had for a song on the secondhand market, so it seems odd to reintroduce the line 13 years later but perhaps 2023 is simply set to be a big moment of rebirth for Yamamoto.
This is the year that Yamamoto will open a brand new New York flagship, for instance, the designer's first in decades.
His partnership with adidas, Y-3, is as big as ever and Yamamoto's first label, Y's, remains popular with womenswear boutiques across the globe.
Designed by Yamamoto's in-house design team, Y's also looks as good as ever so there's no reason to expect anything less than reverential excellence from the reborn Y's for Men, too.
