YOHJI YAMAMOTO | The Wearer Comes First, in Clothes and Fragrance

First comes women, and fashion just follows.

Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto began making clothes by attending to individual bodies and working directly with fabric. His unease with clothes that constrained women, and his desire to protect the wearer, developed into generous shapes and choices that crossed conventional boundaries between women’s and men’s dress.

His fragrances invite a similar interest in the distance between a creation and the person using it. From the first Yohji perfume to L’odeur Yohji Yamamoto, a collection for skin, textiles, hair and rooms, the story concerns how fragrance can enter everyday life.

Contents

Brand facts
The founder and the development of the house
How the house approaches making
References

Brand facts

Founder: Yohji Yamamoto, born in Tokyo in 1943
Business origins: Y’s Incorporated, established in 1972
Paris debut: 1981
First perfume: Yohji, 1996
L’odeur’s Japanese rollout: began on 23 March 2022
Official websites: Yohji Yamamoto / L’odeur at the official Japanese boutique

The founder and the development of the house

Seeing society through his mother’s dressmaking shop

Yamamoto lost his father in the war and was raised by his mother, who worked as a dressmaker. He witnessed her hard work and the unequal treatment she encountered as a woman seeking a bank loan. Seeing the world through her experience became connected with wanting to protect her.

He graduated in law from Keio University without a settled ambition to become a designer. He later recalled that wanting to avoid employment initially led him to think of helping in his mother’s shop. She objected, then insisted that he learn practical skills. He enrolled at Bunka Fashion College.

From fitting individual bodies to Y’s

His mother’s customers had bodies very different from those of models. Making clothes to fit them gave him skills that remained useful throughout his career.

He came to reject clothing that bound women’s bodies to please men, developing an alternative in masculine clothes for women. He wanted working women to find clothes they would buy for themselves with their own money. This direction informed Y’s, launched in 1972: forms for living and moving, with the wearer at their centre.

His Paris debut followed in 1981. Generous shapes and women wearing garments traditionally associated with menswear challenged fixed expectations of gender. His work found beauty beyond emphasising the body’s outline.

From Yohji in 1996 to revisiting earlier fragrances

The first Yohji perfume appeared in 1996 through a collaboration with Jean Patou. Its creator was Jean Kerléo, then Patou’s in-house perfumer. It was conceived for women who disliked perfume.

At the launch, journalist Susannah Frankel asked Yamamoto whether other great fragrances had inspired him. His answer was direct.

I don’t really like any perfume.

Yohji Yamamoto

It is a candid statement of his own taste. The later L’odeur collection gives form to the intimate, delicate fragrances chosen by that same designer.

At the Paris relaunch in 2013, Givaudan perfumer Olivier Pescheux was involved in reworking earlier fragrances. He spoke of the responsibility of revisiting work by perfumers who had taught him, and of encouraging responses from the original creators. Alongside making new scents, the house’s fragrance history includes the work of receiving and reinterpreting an inheritance.

L’odeur grows from a scented invitation

In 2017, 77-01 was completed as a fragrance to accompany invitations to Yamamoto’s Paris collection. Its beginning was a small scented encounter welcoming people to a show.

Five years of development followed, producing 77-02 through 77-05 and the forms that would contain them. L’odeur’s Japanese rollout began on 23 March 2022 through women’s and men’s stores and the official online boutique. Its scope extended from portable fragrance to products for textiles, hair and rooms.

How the house approaches making

Deciding the form through materials and touch

Yamamoto’s work considers the specifications of the fabric itself. Working with craftspeople around Kyoto, he has incorporated traditional dyeing techniques such as shibori and yuzen, alongside embroidery. The material is developed to support the desired form.

Ultimately, doesn’t making things begin with people’s fingertips?

Yohji Yamamoto

The experience of fitting customers in his mother’s shop also suggests a way of judging through touch. An image becomes something adjusted between material and body.

The demands of black: cut and volume

For Yamamoto, black is a demanding colour.

Black is really challenging.

Yohji Yamamoto

It requires precise technique in cut and volume, he has explained. Without relying on a display of colour, the fall of fabric, the space around a body and the shape in motion become prominent. Behind the familiar black silhouette are decisions in tailoring.

A fragrance close to the individual

L’odeur presents transparent, light fragrances that accompany individuality across age and gender. Its ambition is closeness from morning through night and sleep, something as familiar as the body’s own scent.

Read alongside clothing that leaves room around the body, this suggests an interest in allowing the wearer to remain themselves. The question is how fragrance can share a person’s daily life.

A 15ml form for carrying fragrance

The Eau de Cologne collection began with five fragrances in small 15ml bottles. At launch, the set included a leather carrying case, inviting people to alternate scents with their mood or layer them.

In winter 2024, individual bottles joined the five-scent set. Carrying fragrance is an idea expressed in the size and handling of its container.

Different combinations in 77-02 and 77-04

77-02 combines cardamom and lemon peel with tobacco, patchouli, incense, rosewood, moss and cypress. Citrus introduces a composition with spicy, smoky and woody associations. A collection conceived around lightness also finds room for tobacco and incense.

77-04 moves from bergamot, lime and ginger towards petitgrain, leafy green notes and tea, with musk and rhubarb beneath. Here, citrus, leaves and tea form the focus. Following these combinations reveals distinctions that the numbers alone cannot convey.

Changing the means of delivery for fabric, hair and rooms

Alongside cologne are Linen Spray, Sparkling Shampoo, Diffuser and Sabon. The linen sprays use 77-02 and 77-05, the shampoo uses 77-04 and the soap uses 77-01. The five scents are allocated according to use.

In the room diffuser, an upper section made of Arita porcelain absorbs fragrance and releases it into the space. Its predominantly black vessel also becomes part of the room. A small spray for skin and a piece of porcelain holding scent call for different materials and forms as the place of use changes.