Yohji Yamamoto fetes new collection in rare New York visit

By

Roxanne Robinson

Published
June 28, 2024

Cities are not immune to what-if scenarios as portrayed in the recent Netflix drama 'Dark Matter'.

While 20th-century New York City mastermind and architect Robert Moses was creating the Brooklyn-Queens expressway, an extension of the superhighway almost tore through Soho, effectively severing lower Manhattan at Broome Street. Had that occurred, the neighborhood and the city would have had a much different trajectory. The piece of real estate at 52 Wooster, at the corner of Broome, which houses the recently opened Yohji Yamamoto store, certainly wouldn’t exist.

Instead, thanks primarily to New Yorker Jane Jacobs, the iconic street was spared, and it’s now prime corner storefront real estate for the Parisian-Tokyo-based a-garde brand, which returned to the city after a more than decade-long hiatus.

Thus, on Tuesday night in Manhattan, fans, press, and digital creators in attendance at the brand’s in-store cocktail event were able to catch a rare glimpse of the 80-year designer Yamamoto as he visited the 1600-square-foot store for the first time since it opened in September 2023 for the occasion of feting the Yohji Yamamoto and Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme Autumn/Winter 2024 collections.

The designer was ultimately returning to Tokyo following his men’s Spring 2025 show, which featured one of his favorite muse, actress Charlotte Rampling.

Yamamoto arrived halfway through the event and was greeted like the fashion royalty and legend befitting him. He greeted the Akito dog statue, a nod to his own pet and company mascot, at the store’s entryway by patting the faux dog on the head. Next, the crowd filling up the long and narrow Brutalist design-inspired store parted to allow the designer to walk through the store to a VIP space in the back.

While several nodded at him, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see someone bow as the mood was that of witnessing a fashion god in the flesh. According to brand representatives, Yamamoto hadn’t been in New York for almost a decade.

Taking it all in were French Canadian actress and model Coco Baudelle, trap metal rap pioneer ZillaKami, Stevie Wonder’s son Kailand Morris, Indie actress Sophia Lamar, and designers Thakoon Panichgul, Elena Velez and sculptor Misha Kahn and others who enjoyed champagne, ginger ale, and chocolate truffle brownies while experiencing the store’s large overhead screens which had the runway shows of the collections on display on loop. The store represents a new concept for the brand’s retail design, focusing on a ‘physi-digital’ experience.

New to the store will be the addition of Yamamoto’s daughter’s collection, Limi Feu, which was on display and will be sold alongside the Yohji Yamamoto collections for the first time in a flagship store. The younger Yamamoto was also in attendance and said through an interpreter that the last time she was in New York was almost 30 years ago, and she had the flu. While this trip improved over that experience, she offered that she had been resting a lot in her hotel room on this jaunt. Feu’s designs share a similar aesthetic as her father’s, though with a more street and rock vibe.

While the Yohji Yamamoto brand launched in Paris in 1981, it was quickly followed by a 1982 collection debut in New York. In 1988, the brand opened its first New York boutique on Grand Street, which was remodeled in 2005.

In 2010, the store shuttered its doors (as did another location in the Meatpacking District) following a company restructuring after the designer declared bankruptcy in 2009. A new investor stepped in and effectively saved the brand at that time.
Yamamoto, who can claim fans and muses over the decades that vary from Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Drake, a young Justin Bieber, and Wim Wenders, has more than rebounded and then some since then as collaborations with brands such as Supreme, Playboy, Japanese baseball team Giants, and streetwear brand Neighborhood have propelled the brand.

These tie-ups and the popular Y-3 Adidas brand have helped the designer attract a younger demographic. So has the nostalgia for anything that channels the 80s and 90s New York vibes, vibes that wouldn’t have existed had Moses had his way. Thankfully, he didn’t.