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In the 1970s and early 1980s, Japanese designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto shocked the fashion world by introducing avant-garde styles that challenged received Western notions of “chic.”

Informed in part by Japanese traditions such as the kimono, obi, and the art of origami, these designers produced radical garments with shapes and textures often incongruous with the natural contours of the human body.

Their designs - characterized by asymmetry, raw edges, unconventional construction, oversized proportions, and monochromatic palettes - effectively overthrew existing norms and set the stage for the postmodernist movement in the fashion industry.

Miyake, Yamamoto, and Kawakubo remain three of the most successful designers in today’s fashion world, and under their tutelage a new generation of Japanese talent has emerged.

This exhibition, an expanded version of an earlier showing at the Cincinnati Art Museum, will include approximately 40 garments from the collection of Mary Baskett, an art dealer and former curator of prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum who has been collecting and wearing Japanese high fashion since the 1960s.

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Issey Miyake (b. 1938)
Dress, Fall/Winter, 1990/91
Japan
Collection of Mary Baskett