One Thing at a Time
Taste is a word that often gets thrown around. To have taste has become one of the greatest goals for those in the artistic community. If you can predict trends effectively, if you can create sleek business design, if you fit into the mold that corporations want designers to fit into, then, they say, you have taste. That form of “taste,” however, is not real taste. That form of taste can better be described as an awareness of marketing. Real taste is far more personal, something that every person uniquely has within themselves, something that takes tremendous effort to realize. Yohji Yamamoto, a famous fashion designer known for his “anti-fashion-trend” work, is possibly the clearest example of real taste. Looking at the clothes he designs, it is easy to tell that when he makes something, it is something no one else in the world could make. His taste is uniquely his, and through that uniqueness, he has created something that no person with “taste” ever could.
“You can copy somebody whom you very much like very much. You can copy it, copy it, copy it, until end of the copy, you can find yourself,” is the advice that Yamamoto offered to new designers looking to find their taste. Every day we are shown an infinite amount of art made by those who have devoted themselves to their creations. Every day that art changes us in small ways, exposes us to new crafts, and inspires us to create something similar. So we try—we switch every few months to new hobbies and new activities. We try out painting, we tell ourselves “maybe I'll make some clothes!” and “I’ve always wanted to learn the guitar!” We try every single thing that our heart desires and through that we find a large amount of enjoyment! This is amazing, and for many people, this is enough. But if what you desire from your art, from your practice, is something deeper than enjoyment; if you desire to create something new, to find yourself in your creation, and to develop real taste, then this “creative exploration” is just avoidance. The only way to develop the eye and skills necessary to not only find your unique taste, but also to bring it to life, is deep and continuous focus. It's painting every day even when you just saw a really cool reel about dance, it’s staying true to your art even when everyone tells you it's awful, and it’s immersing yourself fully within your practice, doing the repetitive boring work over and over, until at the end, you reach the level of mastery necessary to bring your found taste to life.
Yohji Yamamoto lived these teachings and through them he found his artistic success. Before mass appeal, before Paris, even before his first fashion shop, Yohji was a college student who decided to work with his mom after dropping out of law school in Japan. His mother had been working 16-hour days, every day, wearing black in mourning of her late husband. And it is there that Yohji first found his love of black. Yohji spent many years developing his craft at his mother’s shop, sewing traditional Japanese dresses that presented women in a reserved, feminine light. He hated every second of it, and yet, this is where he found it, his taste. Through sticking with this craft, and working on his skills every single day for years, he was able to find exactly what he wanted to see in the world. He hated how femininely every woman had to be presented, he wanted nothing more than ”for women to wear men's clothes … [he] wanted to protect the woman's body from something – maybe from men's eyes or a cold wind”. This vision for the future led him to create his first shop in Japan, and after 10 years, inspired him to travel to Paris where his work was openly mocked as poverty-stricken. Yet Yamamoto never abandoned his taste, he pursued it until he became one of the most well-known fashion brands in the world. Even being awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Nobel Prize of the French art world, by the very same Paris who mocked his work.
Yamamoto found success, not through exploring every aspect of art and jumping from art form to art form, but through focus. Focus that helped him find his taste and the change he wanted to see in the world, and focus that kept him true to his vision, even when openly mocked, until he was able to bring his taste to life. For everyone who lacks taste, or who has felt their taste dilute at the hands of outside critique, it is through Yohji that we can see the true value of focus. Make the choice to narrow your horizon, and you may yet bring your taste to life.
Written by Jonathan Herrera, Photography: Jazlyn Fisher, Social Media: Ramona Martín, Styling: Maylai Pang