“All the things that adorn woman, all the things that go to enhance her beauty, are part of herself… making… the woman and her dress, an indivisible whole.” (Baudelaire 1972: 423-4)
For a long time, femininity is often defined by how the female body is been perceived and represented, ‘a woman’s character and status are frequently judged by her appearance’ (Betteron 1987) Clothes, make-up and demeanour constitute identity, sexuality and social position are some of elements that constitutes a feminine body. And for centuries, Western fashion has resolutely inclined towards a more structured and tailored kind of silhouette, which exalted the virtues of sexuality, glamour and status—the backbone of the European haute couture design. Western female clothes have historically been designed to exemplify the contours of the body.
While 1980s was majorly characterized by everything glitzy and glamour – with people earning big money and spending conspicuously, the era saw a emergence of a new generation of young Japanese designers whose designs exemplified the ideology of “anti-fashion” and some of these designers were Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. The purpose of this essay is to see how Miyake and Yohji’s emergence and their unconventional design philosophy, silhouettes they created and techniques they have adopted, have called forth a new interpretation of the existing regulations and norms of clothing and fashion; and how women should be perceived and represented.

To see how the representation and perception of the feminine body and western fashion had been drastically changed since the emergence of Japanese design in 1980s, it is important to compare and contrast both Miyake and Yamamoto’s work, in terms of how their philosophy has brought upon this new change.
It was evident that both Miyake and Yamamoto were generally all about challenging everything that were present in the society – social values or any pre-existing traditional artistic standards while the rest of the world was fixated on a certain conventional beauty. For instance, as seen in Figure 1 & 2, while the western fashion is creating clothes that are softer and feminine looking, these two Japanese designers seemed to share similar influence of the three key elements of Japanese aesthetic philosophy by incorporating irregularity, imperfection and asymmetry (Steele 1991: 186) in their work, when both Miyake and Yamamoto introduced dramatically oversized garments with a minimum of detail or buttons, that can be worn by both men and women, shocked the western fashion system.

Figure 1 (Left): Models for designer Issey Miyake show off his collection that are bold in terms of his fabric patterns and also the unusual shapes and lines that exemplifies Issey's quest to challenge the normative fashion system.
In their books, both Miyake and Yamamoto shared about their similar philosophy in their work – that is to create clothes that are beyond nationality and not bounded by any denomination, any religion or any pre-dominant traditions. Both designers mentions:
“… I realized these two wonderful advantages I enjoy, and that was when I started to experiment creating a new genre of clothing, neither Western nor Japanese but beyond nationality. I hoped to create a new universal clothing which is challenging to our time. (Miyake 1984)”
’I believe my clothes are non denominational, without nationality. They don’t belong to any country, any religion or any culture. They are outsiders’ (Yamamoto 2002: 102).
Both Miyake and Yamamoto challenged not only the conventions of how garment are being constructed and the regularzing concept of fashion through their philosophy they have towards design, but it was also clearly seen through the kind of silhouettes that they produced in their designs.

Figure 3: Model walking for Yohji Yamamoto from Fall/Winter 1984 collection. Avant-garde touches to the design such as large fabric were draped and folded around the model’s body. Like Miyake’s design, they were unisex and assymetrical, covering the female body. Photograph: Bergfashionlibrary.com

Figure 4: Model wearing a drapey and baggy design from Issey Miyake’s 1984 collection.

Miyake and Yamamoto were known for creating silhouettes that are gender neutral or unisex. As seen in Figures 3 & 4, while gender roles are determined only by social rules and regulations formed by society, both designers used clothing to construct and deconstruct gender and gender differences. Although clothing is commonly used as a tool to help other people to quickly identify the individual's biological sex, these two Japanese designers blurred the line of how Western clothes are designed to identify one’s gender. Yamamoto talks about his idea (Duka 1983: 63)

“Men’s clothing is more pure in design. It's more simple and has no decoration. Women want that. When I started designing, I wanted to make men's clothes for women. But there were no buyers for it. Now there are. I always wonder who decided that there should be a difference in the clothes of men and women. Perhaps men decided this.”. Although both Miyake and Yamamoto were very similar in many ways when it comes to their philosophy and silhouettes they have created that defied the conventional female fashion silhouette and the normative western fashion, one could still tell the differences in terms of their individual aesthetics in their collections. For instance, Yamamoto was known for his relentless usage of black in his design, which was usually associated poverty and devastation. On top of Yamamoto’s unrelenting black-on-black aesthetics, his work are always seemed as unfinished, shabby, and randomly put together, these trademarks of his design was deemed to have a symbolic association with the Japanese word view ‘wabi-sabi’ , that centered on the acceptance of incompleteness and imperfection. As a whole, Yamamoto's clothing seems to reflect a kind of exasperation that evoked images of nuclear holocaust survivors and were labeled the "Hiroshima bag lady" look by some critics at some time. Figure 5: Issey Miyake/Yasumasa Morimura, Guest Artist series No. 1, screen-printed polyester Pleats, Please collection dress, autumn/winter 1996–7. Figure 6: Black voluminous assymetrical dress from Yohji Yamamoto’s Autumn/Winter 1981 Womenwear collection.
In contrast to Yamamoto’s seemingly dark aesthetics, Miyake’s aesthetics tend to lend a slightly more feminine touch to his collection by incorporating colors into his design. As seen in Figure 5, even though Miyake tends to use more earth-toned colors in his design in the earlier part of his career, the designer began to incorporate more high fashion colors and prints born out of his collaborations with several artists such as, Yasuma Morimura the contemporary Japanese fine artist, the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, and artist Tim Hawkinson, into his collections since 1996. The incorporation of a more colorful palettes helps to create a slightly happier mood to Miyake’s design as compared to Yamamoto’s use of somber colors, which tends to give off the dreary and gloomy mood. Miyake’s particular interest in forming garments that are dedicated to the vitality and movement of the human body, particularly drawing reference from the Sudanese, Japanese, and American cultures help explains the flexibility and lightness of the clothes, something that differentiates his work from Yamamoto’s often bulky and hefty-looking designs as seen in Figure 6. In conclusion, if it weren’t because of Miyake’s and Yamamoto’s unique visions and non-conforming attitude towards fashion, the society will not be able to experience the new era of fashion, people will continue to live under the same codes of conducts and conventional fashion set by the western fashion. It is evident that since the emergence of Miyake’s and Yamamoto’s unconventional interpretation of the women bodies, through the silhouettes they have created, have significantly changed the society’s view and perspective towards the women bodies and a genderless silhouette.