The Fashion BusinessFor many designers and wearers of minimalist clothing though there is a
series of subconscious meanings hidden beneath the surface. It is clear that
simplicity of form can be a more deliberate search for new definitions in
dress. In Rei Kawakubo’s work for Comme des Garçons, the relationship
between body and fabric, and the spatial planes they create in combination
are intrinsic parts of her design approach. In an outfit from her Spring/Summer
1994 collection layers of black linen cloak the body. The silhouette was
reduced to a simple column, but within this there was a play of dark and
light, transparent and opaque as the folds of tunic and skirt met and crossed
over. For Kawakubo designing is always about questioning and testing the
boundaries of fashion; in this case the asceticism of the resulting garments is
a means of forcing the viewer to concentrate on the forms and textures of
the clothing. The Western couture tradition of extravagance and overt luxury
as the key signifiers of wealth and status are challenged by this erasure of
decoration and the contemplation instead of simple, clean shapes. As Harold
Koda has demonstrated she draws upon Japanese philosophy of sabi ‘poverty/
simplicity/aloneness’, and wabi ‘transience/decay and rusticity’ to produce
‘an aesthetic of external denial and internal refinement’.^16
In Yohji Yamamoto’s work a similar philosophy of design is in operation.
As with Kawakubo, colour is often negated, leaving only shades of blackness,
or garments are drenched in a wash of colour in a full-length dress of 1998
warm golden yellow, that adds richness to the felt fabric. In contrast to Sander
and Armani who tend to favour expensive fabrics to add dimension to their
designs, for these Japanese designers the poverty of the material speaks of
the reflective nature of their work, and potentially of the wearer who looks
inwards too, the austere shell of her garments a symbol of inner thought and
tranquility. The simple forms provide the space for introspection and higher
thought, once again, as with the European designers discussed, minimalism
is held to be a sign of intelligence.
Hussein Chalayan’s work is another example of this belief in asceticism,
in the denial of flamboyance and distracting decorative elements, as a tenet
of an alternative form of beauty. The forms of a grey, caped, sleeved jacket
photographed for Frankmagazine in September 1998 had an organic feel,
heightened by the illuminated fronds of the leaves in the background of the
image. The curving line of the sleeves drew the eye inwards towards the
deep black of the skirt, revealed beneath the rounded hem of the jacket. In
this example a minimalist aesthetic was used to give a sense of purity to the
- Koda, H. vol. II, 1985.‘Rei Kawakubo and the Aesthetics of Poverty’,Dress, 1985,
p. 8.