Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion, Barbican Art Gallery London

The barbican in London held an exhibition called Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese fashion exploring the history of Japanese fashion.

The exhibition consisted of a series of rooms showcasing Japanese fashion in relation to art and culture. Showing over 100 pieces that explored avant-garde Japanese fashion from the early 1980’s until now. The exhibitors were designers such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

When entering the room it was a relaxing atmosphere with the white sheer fabric draped from the ceiling slowly leading you around the room. With soft music playing in the background it set a scene for the avant-garde designs.

The lower gallery space is divided into four themed sections, in praise of shadows, flatness, tradition and innovation and cool Japan. While the upper space has dedicated a room for each designer to showcase there work spanning three decades of fashion.

Frayed hems, unfinished seams and abnormal folds were common amongst the pieces it was keeping detail to a minimum within some garments. New shapes had been created, they were inspired against the western world and how everything was tailored and had to fit perfectly. Rei Kawakubo was one of the main leaders in this style of fashion; she created garments that deformed the human shape she was designing against women’s form. 30 years of Japanese fashion shows this movement within Japanese fashion and showed how designers were inspired by this change from big designers such as Issey Miyake to less well known designers who were influenced by her work.

As the stairwell leads you to the top and garments suddenly become clear as small exhibitions for each designer have been created and the sound of different videos playing showing each of the catwalk shows and interviews with the designers. Different moods are created as you walk into each of the rooms.

Issey Miyake A-POC is a stretched knit that can be cut along lines to create your own clothing this was stretched from floor to ceiling in a blood red, which was the main focal point of down stairs, other items seemly lost around it with such a vivid colour.

An interview is shown where Kawakubo talks of her designs and her inspirations within her work. Kawakubo rarely talks about her inspirations and her designs. There is a build up of intensity as you walk around as the videos get faster and the music becomes more up beat on each of the videos and finally the last room doesn’t have any music playing but it is the largest collection. It shows vivid colours, prints and patterns all in random designs on coats jackets and dresses. The final collection couldn’t have had any music or a video as it would of taken away from the intensity of the collection. The exhibition showcased Japanese fashion over the past 30 years and showed a small portion of the magnificent work that has been created taking the viewer on a tour of Japanese history.