“To this day I am filled with gratitude to Kansai for seeing in me a special spark, and, giving me the wings I needed to fly,” wrote Marc Jacobs, paying tribute to the legendary designer Kansai Yamamoto on Instagram this morning. Kansai—as he preferred to be called to avoid confusion with another fashion-famous Yamamoto—died this month at age 76. Tributes have abounded on social media, from the likes of Jeremy Scott and Anna Sui.
The Yokohama-born designer was best known for the costumes he made for David Bowie, but he made waves on the runways, too. In 1971, he was one of the first Japanese designers to show in Europe, bringing his collectsion to London Fashion Week in flashes of color, print, and glamour, and subsequently paving the way for the Japanese designers that would follow him. Decades later his influence still looms large. In 2017, Nicolas Ghesquière designed an entire collectsion in homage to Yamamoto, but there have been plenty of other tributes on the catwalk. Here, a look back at a select few.
Photo: GoRunway.com1/5Rick Owens fall 2020 menswear
“This collectsion is very Kansai/Beuys,” wrote Rick Owens in the press release for his fall 2020 menswear collectsion. Dubbed Performa, the collectsion touched on the attenuated silhouettes of ’70s male glamazons like David Bowie, paying tribute to Kansai Yamamoto’s work in a look that combined Bowie’s striped Tokyo Pop jumpsuit with the one-legged knit he wore in 1973.
Photo: GoRunway.com2/5Louis Vuitton resort 2018
“I’ve bought many of his clothes at auction,” said Nicolas Ghesquière of Kansai at Louis Vuitton’s resort 2018 show in Kyoto. The entire collectsion was a referential tribute to Ghesquière’s Japanese fashion forebears, with Yamamoto receiving top billing as his graphics were interpreted on sequin dresses and petite malle bags. Kansai himself sat front row. “Amazing,” he said of the show.
Photo: GoRunway.com3/5Gucci spring 2018
Elton John might have been the name in lights at Alessandro Michele’s spring 2018 Gucci collectsion, with the musician’s stagewear transformed into near-replicas, but Kansai Yamamoto’s exuberance is woven throughout this and many other of Michele’s collectsions. Kansai’s love of animal prints and clashing graphics were touched on in this look—though it’s worth noting that he also designed a number of John’s costumes too.
Photo: Indigital.tv4/5Louis Vuitton spring 2011
One of Marc Jacobs’s earliest claims to fame came at the hands of Kansai Yamamoto. During one of the designer’s trips to New York he met Jacobs, then a student at Parsons, and was so enchanted with his exuberance he put the 18-year-old in charge of planning a party. The result was a truly over-the-top affair where each guest was handed a live goldfish in a plastic bag on a necklace. “I was given the chance to share an experience that would eventually inform the way I thought about putting on my own shows in the years to come,” Jacobs wrote. For spring 2011, he paid homage to Kansai’s work at Louis Vuitton with sequin animal tunics featuring peaked shoulders.
Photo: Getty Images5/5Jeremy Scott fall 2002
A kindred spirit in the more-is-more approach to fashion, Jeremy Scott’s first show in New York City was dubbed “Grace Jones–meets–Judy Jetson” though it’s hard not to see the obvious tribute to Kansai’s silhouettes in this look worn by Natasa Vojnovic. “He was one of my favorites designers who I had the great fortune to meet on one of my visits to Tokyo,” Scott wrote in tribute to Kansai on Twitter.
