Word: fabricators
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tends not to be harmonic or atmospheric: it is distinct, a sequence of clear notes struck on the retina. To a greater degree than in Western art, each color comes equipped with its own symbolic associations, which remain more or less constant through its use in architecture, print, neon, fabric design, packaging, food or painting. Red, for instance, pertains to magic and sorcery, vitality, fire and the conquest of evil spirits. Japanese color is grounded in nature: every indigo or cobalt dye runs, as it were, back to the sea. But the circuit between nature and abstraction is far shorter...
...wildly respected among the feudal states of fashion, and are beginning to be recognized in the big world outside. Even for people who may have trouble pronouncing the names on the labels in a boutique, there is a growing perception of the changes these designers are trying to make. Fabric sewed and folded into shapes that shift on the body like shadows. Colors that seem to come from the shaded, sun-dried underside of the spectrum. Clothes that reshape the body with the undulations of their fabric. Garments in which the space between the body and the cloth sets...
This may seem like heavy freight for mere fashion to bear, but Japanese designers do not usually make the fussy Western distinction between craft and art. Issey Miyake talks about the "energy" of fabric and works with a bolt of cloth like a sculptor with clay, not molding it into a presketched design but draping the whole length over a body, drawing the shape of the final garment from the fabric itself as it works in easy collaboration with the body. Rei Kawakubo, the most austere and cerebral of these new designers, speaks intensely about "getting down to the essence...
Yohji Yamamoto, whose wondrously simple cascades of fabric combine Kawakubo's seriousness and Miyake's ebullience, may say that "fashion is fashion. In the end I think that fashion should not be an art." But he also expects his clothes to have the social impact of some major masterwork. "If you want to wear these," he says, "then you must change your situation...
...eight stylishly dressed jurists huddled around a stark, white, rectangular table were sifting through endless snippets of yarn and swatch upon swatch of silk, rayon and linen. "We need to soften the yellow to almost a blond yellow," one mulled aloud, squinting at several fabric squares. A green swatch was rejected by one woman with a disapproving, "That's too much of a bathroom tile shade." Another tan square drew the comment, "Good. It doesn't have any shine, like a brown paper bag." It seemed for a time that no decisions would be reached, but after...