Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo: these are some of the biggest names in fashion today. Even for the novice fashionista, the very mention of their names conjures a vision of pushing fashion to its absolute limits. Their highly conceptual, avant-garde approach to design, combining the histories of Eastern and Western dress, emerged within Japan’s postwar counterculture. Almost half a century on from their first collections, their work has infiltrated all aspects of the fashion industry – from shop design, to publishing, exhibition-making and, of course, fashion design itself. 

This week Osman Ahmed speaks to esteemed fashion historian (and Director and Curator of The Fashion Institute of Technology) Valerie Steele, about the moment that Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohjo Yamamoto merged Japanese dress with Western fashion, and the ideas that would influence their early work; Fashion consultant and CEO of PR Consulting Paris Nathalie Ours, who started working for Yohji Yamamoto in the late 1980s, remembers what it was like seeing his work for the first time; and Tiffany Godoy, Head of Editorial Content at Vogue Japan takes us through these designers’ countercultural origins and their contributions to the industry at large.

Host: Osman Ahmed

Scripting: Osman Ahmed, Amelia Phillips

Research: Alexia Marmara

Art Direction: Calum Glenday and Aleksandra Talacha

Producer: Amelia Phillips

Audio Producer: Robin Leeburn

Production: Podmasters

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