Yohji Yamamoto

Born in Tokyo in 1943 and raised by his widowed dressmaker mother, Yohji Yamamoto studied law at Keio University and then fashion at Bunka Fashion College, graduating in 1969. He launched his women's ready-to-wear company Y's in 1972 and presented his first Yohji Yamamoto collection in Paris in 1981 alongside Rei Kawakubo, an event that reset Western fashion's vocabulary around black, asymmetry, draping and anti-bourgeois tailoring. His menswear line followed in 1984. In 2002 he launched Y-3 with adidas, the first major designer-sportswear collaboration of its kind, fusing his draping with three-stripe athletic codes. He continues to lead Yohji Yamamoto Inc. from Tokyo as one of the most influential figures in postwar fashion.