The first item was a shirt and pencil skirt in a sharp black. So far, so authentic and classic, but hardly new. The next piece to appear was another silky sleeveless dress. But something was hanging from the back. When the model passed, it became apparent that this was a well-made tailored jacket.
So Yoshida had attached a jacket to the back of the clothing. But a closer look revealed that the model was actually wearing the lining of the jacket as a top. The third piece in the collection was an elegant sleeveless blouse, to the back of which was attached a shirt-style jacket made from a detailed houndstooth suit. Though it initially seemed like a jacket fastened to the back of an item of clothing, a subsequent glen plaid coat revealed that here too, the models were wearing the jacket lining as a top. A glittering silver off the shoulder top. A bright red knee-length dress. A stirring blue cami dress. A long dress in a fine floral pattern. Paired with this parade of elegant womenswear were menswear getups that matched boyish shorts with beautiful tailored jackets and coats worn on the back. That this all seemed like punishments meted out on childish young boys or strictly disciplined ladies surely came down to Yoshida’s deployment of fetishistic elements as design accents to smash orthodoxies.
According to Yoshida, this season’s collection was a series of “reproductions” that reinterpreted, in his own way, clothing perfected over the course of fashion history. He focused on jacket linings, the contrarian desire to highlight what is ordinarily hidden inside a jacket forming the starting point for his designs. “I realized there was a gap between the inside and outside parts of the jacket, and tried putting my scissors into the collar, armhole, and hem lining,” Yoshida said. And then actually slipping his body into those interstices, he apparently became fascinated by how the lining cleaved so well to the body, and by its BDSM-esque sensual beauty. The jackets that hung from the back of the models were, ultimately, a kind of afterthought. But the disquietude that aroused is surely part and parcel of this collection’s appeal.