The story of Chrome Hearts can be utilized as a modern day Western movie script: a passionate Los Angeles rebel turned successful American fashion entrepreneur, but still hates the status quo and the idea of high-end fashion. The cult-classic brand has been around for over 3 decades, yet it still remains a behind-closed-doors, *IYKYK* entity. The early consumers and perception of Chrome Hearts differs greatly to what it is today. Mainstream commercialization and your favorite hip/hop & rap artist has unintentionally broken down the barriers of entry for consumption. When a niche entity is mixed with hype culture, the level of saturation inevitably increases. Unfortunately, so does the cringe. And like everything else, the memes came right along. 

Now, it’s hard to take the brand seriously sometimes when it’s being laughed at the same way the community laughs at VLONE. Everywhere you go, whether it’s online or your favorite shopping district, it’s hard to ignore all the t-shirts with Horseshoe screenprints and trucker hats with FUCK embroidery. But it’s also hard to ignore all the oddities that Chrome Hearts still churn out and market via their social media posts and flagship displays. How does a brand, who is responsible for all the “drip” that all these rappers claim to have, still create timeless and tasteful furniture and jewelry pieces that appeal to a select audience? 

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Chrome Hearts is slowly mastering the equilibrium between tasteful art creations for their die-hard collectors and screen-printed merchandise that appeals to the masses. Their adaptation to the modern culture and new consumer base has been widely successful, and not many brands have been able to adapt. The journey of Chrome Hearts has been a rollercoaster ride but one thing remains for certain: *Chrome Hearts is here to stay and they still don’t give a fuck. *

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To fully understand the bigger picture, we must go back to 1988. Richard Stark, a high-end carpenter in Hollywood, California, was given an opportunity to costume design a low-budget Troma slasher film titled *Chopper Chicks in Zombietown*. The horror comedy was originally going to be titled Chrome Hearts, but it was a working title and the team eventually moved in another direction. As the gig continued on and Stark’s creations were beginning to gain traction among the filming crew and their social circles, opportunities began to arise. Steve Jones, later known as Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, immediately connected with Stark via his girlfriend who starred in the film about biker chicks and zombies. Stark began to see something brewing, and he connected with his friend John Bowman, a leather manufacturer, to start a motorcycle-riding gear company based in a Los Angeles garage. This brand would eventually be called *Chrome Hearts*, as Stark snagged that name after it was tossed by the film crew. 

They would take leather goods craftsmanship to the next level, establishing themselves in the motorcycle scene and slowly in the fashion scene. Stark and Bowman would join forces with Leonard Kamhout, a master of sterling-silver jewelry, to add sterling-silver motifs to the leather goods. Their products would take Hollywood and Los Angeles by storm, as punk rock and rock bands like Motley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, The Rolling Stones, and Aerosmith began to ask for custom Chrome Hearts pieces. Everyone wanted leather jackets and pants from Chrome Hearts, as each piece would contain sterling-silver hardware on the snaps, buttons, zipper pulls, and much more. The quality and ethos of the product spoke for itself; there was no marketing plan in place. Lenny Kravitz wanted a Chrome Hearts piece because he knew that Chrome Hearts made the best leather jackets in the world at that time. It was no longer just a motorcycle-riding gear company. Chrome Hearts was destined for something greater. But Stark honestly had no clue.

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When the CFDA came knocking and calling to award Richard Stark the CFDA Accessory Designer of the Year award in 1992, no one answered. Soon, they would finally get in contact with Stark, who promised that he would have someone there to present the award. Next thing you know, Cher is walking down the red carpet in head-to-toe Chrome Hearts to present the CFDA award to Richard. After the CFDA award, Richard began to receive more and more phone calls and messages regarding his brand, but one in particular stood out as the most impactful. Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons, wanted Chrome Heart pieces to showcase for a season in her Aoyama flagship. Not only would this expose Chrome Hearts to a brand new demographic across the globe, it opened up the floodgates of the Asian fashion consumers. The star clients were calling, the Asian market was booming, and Chrome Hearts even began stocking at exclusive boutiques like Maxfield. However, the rollercoaster ride of the Chrome Hearts journey reached its first major bump two years after the CFDA award, as the trio of founders had a falling out and agreed to split in 1994 after Richard bought them out of the business. Laurie Lynn, a long-time client and wife of Richard Stark, would join the business and help take Chrome Hearts to the next level: global and digital. 

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The mantra of Chrome Hearts remained the same after decades of success: If you know, you know. *If you don’t know, fuck you*. Respectfully, of course. The exclusivity of Chrome Hearts defined the brand in the early 2000s and through the 2010s. Richard and Laurie opened their first flagship store in New York City in 1996, marking a significant milestone in the journey of Chrome Hearts. The cult-classic products now had a home and a door for consumers to walk through and browse. Throughout this time, they would never sell products online directly to consumers and their website only had location information, as more and more flagships were built strategically in various locations around the world. As of 2021, there are 20 flagships in Asia (Japan, China, Korea), 10 in the Americas (mostly the United States), 3 in Europe, and only 10 authorized retailers around the world. The barriers of entry for mass consumption prevailed throughout the years. If you found out about Chrome Hearts somehow, you now had to find a way to make a trip to a flagship to experience the brand and its products in person. 

Everything in the store would be Chrome Hearts customized, from the door handles to the wood counters and even hangers. One-of-one art pieces are displayed through the flagships, sometimes even outside the retail space. It truly is a retail experience like no other and you really need to go out of your way to find it. The lack of digital presence and brand information is not only a strategy of the Stark family, it also represents Richard’s approach to his work since the beginning. He never had a marketing plan for Chrome Hearts. His Instagram account, which is surprising in the first place, only has 5 posts. Everything about Chrome Hearts is cryptic, from their product development, factories, inventory, collaborations, and overall brand ethos. It really does feel like a cult when you’re introduced to Chrome Hearts because even secondary market resell was hard to obtain for a significant period of time. Even if you knew, you didn’t really know. That’s what made people want Chrome Hearts even more. 

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Since the inception of Chrome Hearts, the world of fashion consumption has changed significantly. Access to infinite information is now a few mouse clicks and thumb scrolls away. Instagram is filled with mood boards and images tagged with all your favorite brands and influencers. Even if you want to get away from the advertising and social algorithms, you can’t. This would change the fashion world and how their audience consumes it socially and financially. As cryptic and lowkey Chrome Hearts was, the Stark family and their team knew it was a global phenomenon they couldn’t avoid. Whether they wanted to or not, they knew they had to adapt.

The hip/hop & rap community is undoubtedly the most influential among the youth and young adult demographic. You either want to be a rapper, idolize a rapper, listen to a rapper religiously, or spend a good amount of time consuming a rapper’s social content. The Stark family saw this and began to expand, as they began to slowly cater to rappers in the late 90s, 2000s, and early 2010s. Artists like Juelz Santana, Lil Wayne, and even Jay Z, were seen sporting Chrome Hearts pieces and jewelry. The images of these rappers in Chrome Hearts would become Internet relics, as every mood board Instagram page continuously queues up a square image of Jay Z sitting courtside with Beyonce, wearing Chrome Hearts. *If you know, you know*. 

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However, this would not have nearly the same impact as the present day. Chrome Hearts is undeniably one of the most mentioned brands in hip/hop & rap music. Artists like Drake, Migos, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, Young Thug, Playboi Carti, and Gunna have all cosigned Chrome Hearts as the next cool brand to wear. The Starks are now fielding calls from private shoppers and stylists that are hoping to get their clients as much Chrome Hearts clothing as possible because all the “cool” artists have labeled it as “drip”. And unlike the CFDA in 1992, the Starks are answering immediately. Each of these artists has over millions of dedicated fans and followers, as they listen carefully to what their favorite rapper is talking about. So when Drake and Migos are rapping about Chrome Hearts, their fans immediately hit Google for a chance to relate to the artist socially and financially. 

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This influx of mainstream consumption of the brand would shatter the barriers of entry set forth by the Stark family early on, and honestly they have embraced it to some extent. The introduction, implementation, and normalization of e-commerce and secondary market reselling via StockX and resale boutiques globally have influenced Chrome Hearts’ decision to launch their own direct-to-consumer shopping section within their website. Not only are they supplying prominent rappers and influencers with clothing as marketing materials for the brand, they are also beginning to supply the consumer directly via their own e-commerce platform. You can find cult-classic Chrome Hearts products and oddities on their website, which was once just a landing page with locations of global flagships. Now, if you know, you know but you can also buy.

There’s certain things in life that are guaranteed: *death, taxes, Drake wearing Chrome Hearts,* and *memes*. There are several consequences, both positive and negative, about mass mainstream exposure and consumption of a niche brand and community. One of these consequences are the inevitable memes that hit way too close to home sometimes. For an entity that was once so exclusive like Chrome Hearts, the memes came flooding with mainstream consumption. Every Instagram fashion meme account is filled with images making fun of dudes wearing Horseshoe tee-shirts and FUCK hats, which are two staple items in the Chrome Hearts clothing collections. Or they talk about fighting the final Chrome Hearts boss, who are die-hard collectors in Japan who wear head-to-toe Chrome Hearts like it’s their sterling-silver body armor. 


The saturation of the Chrome Hearts logos is prevalent throughout social media, as people flood the Internet with screen-printed Chrome Hearts that resemble merchandise more than actual pieces that Richard Stark and his team was creating during the early stages of the brand. It’s a no-brainer that the screen-printed merchandise is their bread and butter; it’s the most accessible product and always in stock, if it’s not being bulk bought by resellers. Now, the Chrome Hearts signature Old English typography is everywhere and people are even turning their backs on pictures to show it off. It is on the same playing field as something like a VLONE, which is a significant deviation from the actual ethos of the leather goods brand once sought out by every rockstar and Hollywood celebrity. Whether that is a good thing or not, there is one thing for certain. Chrome Hearts is here to stay.

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The rollercoaster ride of Chrome Hearts continues on today and they are undoubtedly ascending to the peak of their business endeavors. They are easily a billion-dollar company, as the Starks secretly sold 10% of their company to a private equity firm for roughly $150 million dollars. However, Chrome Hearts consumers will never directly feel the weight of that billion-dollar valuation because even as of today, Chrome Hearts still has not changed their brand ethos. The products have deviated a bit to meet the needs and demand of the new-age youth consumer, but the Starks are still pushing the well-oiled machine that defined their brand in the early 90s and 2000s. Flagships still have FUCK YOU motifs throughout the store and it’s still an odyssey to get to a brick-and-mortar Chrome Hearts store. The production of the best leather goods in the world has not stopped and they are still doing it out of their Hollywood factories. Everything is still made in the United States of America, except for their eyewear line that is made in Japan. However, to survive in an overloaded information and short-attention span fashion economy, the Starks have adapted to new strategies. 

To ramp up sales, which are at an all-time-high, they began mass-producing screen printed merchandise for public consumption. The streets wanted t-shirts with abrasive Chrome Hearts logos and typography, and they met that demand like they did when all of Hollywood wanted a Chrome Hearts leather jacket back in the day. The future is bright for Chrome Hearts. There will be more collaborations, more oddities, and more storytelling through their products. The Starks have found creative inspiration from their children and family, as specific projects pertain to each of their interests such as bikinis, nail polish, and workwear. 

With the help of creative director Mattyboy, the ethos of Chrome Hearts have dabbled in the contemporary art world. Mattyboy’s hand-drawn style brings a new level of artistic uniqueness to the designs of Chrome Hearts, as he finds the perfect balance between his color characters and the traditional symbols. Aside from the hand-drawn art, Chrome Hearts still create one-of-one pieces that helped define the brand’s legacy since day one. A prime example is the workbench project, as Richard Stark tapped back into his woodwork background to create an art piece with family friend Virgil Abloh. Clients are now able to look at the art piece as if they are in an art gallery when they stroll through the Chrome Hearts flagships. A true full-circle moment.

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Aside from all the saturation, memes, and screen printed merchandise, Chrome Hearts remains a timeless entity with their designs, legacy, and heritage. The brand represents something that is rare in modern-day fashion, as they embrace the idea of conforming. They still refuse to follow trends. They still refuse to participate in any status quo procedures in the fashion world. Marketing strategies are still cryptic and the numbers are still private. You will know about a Chrome Hearts project or launch when they want you to know. Now, if you know, it’s because they wanted you to know. Not because they need you to know. It’s truly a journey like no other. Chrome Hearts has risen from the muck of Hollywood and polished itself into something greater.

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Chrome Hearts has risen from the muck of Hollywood and polished itself into something greater.

Chrome Hearts: A Closer Look into a Fashion Enigma

The relationship between adidas and Yohji Yamamoto spans over 2 decades, cementing the timeless partnership of the two global entities in fashion and sportswear. The implementation of Y-3 after Yamamoto’s initial adidas projects displayed how much the footwear titan believed in Yamamoto’s vision of making sportswear elegant and chic. Over the span of 20 years, adidas and Yamamoto created runway collections and products that mixed the worlds of fashion and sportswear with projects that used cohesive language drawn from each brand's ethos. There was, and still is, a perfect equilibrium. 

With a special invite from the adidas Originals team, ARCHIVE.pdf visited the adidas campus in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Led by adidas Historian and Archivist, Ms. Sandra Trapp, the team explored the deep history of adidas, the importance of adidas Originals, and the relationship between adidas and Yohji Yamamoto. 

The first stop was the exhibition. 

HALFTIME, a newly designed building by adidas and COBE Architects, housed the 75 Years of adidas exhibition that explored the entire journey of the German sportswear brand. A significant portion of this exhibition chaptered the brand’s important relationship with Yamamoto. There was a selection of products that showcased the pivotal moments of the partnership, as adidas was the first in the industry to introduce a new lifestyle segment focusing on sports performance-inspired fashion. 

The YY Mei Brocade was a laceless slip-on sneaker that was one of the first products that Yamamoto redesigned for the brand, featured in his Spring/Summer 2002 womenswear runway show. Brocade (Japanese shuttle-woven silks) were utilized for the uppers of the sneaker, and each individual pair uniquely possessed different floral patterns. The sneaker would help pave the way for Y-3 in the upcoming year.

The Y-3 Spring/Summer 2003 Ready-to-Wear collection was Yohji Yamamoto’s attempt to make sportswear elegant and the Y-3 floral jersey dress came as one of the highlights of the collection. It featured elements of a football jersey with the shoulder stripes and collared neckline, but it also featured elements of a springtime floral dress that grazed the body perfectly. Yamamoto and his team were officially setting the foundations of Y-3, bridging the gap between runway fashion and sportswear.

*Yohji Yamamoto Mei Brocade and section of the 75 Years of adidas exhibition*

The back-painted perforated leather biker jacket from the Spring/Summer 2004 Heroes collection was the foundation piece of the exhibition. Award ceremony-inspired pieces featured portraits of Y-3 medalists sporting the iconic 3 stripes in their post-victory glory. The airbrush portraits were done by Saeko Tsuemura, a Japanese designer and illustrator that often blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. Tsuemura was a frequent collaborator of Yamamoto, as she applied her prominent airbrush painting styles to various YY collections such as Autumn/Winter 1991 and Spring/Summer 2002. 

The leather jackets helped celebrate the 1st anniversary of the line, as models walked the runway waving flags with 3 stripes representing Olympic athletes with their country’s flag during the Opening Ceremony. 

Two decades later, it is one of the most coveted pieces from Y-3.

Yohji Yamamoto Adidas Y-3 HEROES leather jacket

*Images of Yohji Yamamoto Adidas Y-3 HEROES leather jacket* 

The Y-3 “Cutout Wedge” from 2010 was a particularly avant-garde gesture for the sportswear world in the 2010s. The silhouette was a new development from the “Cushion Wedge" that was previewed the season prior, as it featured upper cut-outs that allowed for sleek breathability. The leather upper was combined with an ‘adiPRENE’ wedge sole that represented the innovative adidas technology and Yamamoto’s fearless ethos to test boundaries and redefine normality. He wanted to challenge the definition of the Y-3 Woman. 

The Y-3 Real Madrid football jersey from 2014 was the final moment in the YY and Y-3 branch of the exhibition. Designed for the 2014-2015 Real Madrid season, this was a major moment in the sportswear world as fashion transcended the runway and reached the pitch. The jersey was part of the third kit for a Real Madrid team that featured football legends like Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric, James Rodriguez, and many more. The kit incorporated two mythical beasts that originated from Eastern Asian culture: the dragon king & dragon bird. The king symbolized the greatness, glory, and power of the La Liga club while the bird represented resistance, determination, and agility. This moment also spotlighted Yohji Yamamoto’s curiosity for football: previously, Yamamoto spent the end of his Y-3 Spring/Summer 2010 Ready-to-Wear runway taking penalty goal kicks with Zinedine Zidane; truly an iconic moment in fashion and sportswear.

After exploring the historical moments of adidas and Yohji Yamamoto, the next stop was the adidas archive. Prepped with museum-level gloves, Ms. Sandra Trapp showcased various types of adidas products and history dating back to the 1950s. 

The adidas SL 72 was a focal point of this exploration. Inspired by the SL 72 mule clog from the late 1990s, Yohji Yamamoto reworked the SL 72 mule that would be shown on the runway of his Spring/Summer 2002 womenswear collection in various colorways. Dubbed the SL 72 YY Embroidered, it debuted along the YY Mei Brocade. Models walked the runway in the sleek adidas silhouettes that sported Yamamoto’s famous signature on top of the iconic 3 stripes. The floral elements caught the eye as the tailored pants and dresses draped perfectly on top of the haute-couture SL 72 variant. The collection felt lightweight and effortless, emphasized greatly by the scalloped-edged mules. 

As it was designed and developed before the inception of Y-3, the SL 72 YY Embroidered previewed the foundational design pillars to what a relationship between adidas and Yohji Yamamoto would look like. He took structural elements from the original adidas SL 72 mule and translated them perfectly onto the YY SL 72 Embroidered, as it had the same sawtooth outsole, laceless elements, and toe cap construction. The biggest differentiator is the all leather upper; complemented with contrasting floral embroidery throughout the upper and into the sockliner, the mule perfectly displayed the Eastern Asian elements that Yamamoto implemented in his design process for his namesake brand. The SL 72 YY Embroidered was the breath of fresh air that adidas needed and the elegant sportswear that Yamamoto had romanticized.

This was a perfect representation of what was to come in the next two decades. Yohji Yamamoto embraced the 1 + 1 = 3 formula, where collaborations between two creators must create something completely new and different while still embracing heritage elements from both sides. 

Two decades later, everything has come full circle. 

The SL 72 is being reintroduced as a new legacy member in the adidas Originals family, both in the OG and RS (Reshaped) models, while Y-3 is still trailblazing and redefining the concept of elegant sportswear. A decade after the 2014 Real Madrid kit, Yamamoto and his team has designed a kit for the 2024 Real Madrid Men’s and Women’s teams along with a 2024 Predator Elite Y-3 cleat. 

There is a significant importance to adidas remaining authentic to its brand heritage when creating product and storytelling. In its attempt to introduce a new lifestyle segment focusing on sports performance-inspired fashion 20 years ago, adidas and Yohji Yamamoto have ultimately redefined the relationship between sportswear and fashion. 

*The result is a modern uniform of the streets.*
*Designed in Japanese and German ateliers and intended for the world.*


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German sportswear meets East Asian fashion. A two decade exploration of adidas, YY, and Y-3.

Elegant Sportswear: A Harmonious Partnership between adidas & Yohji Yamamoto

[Alan Bilzerian](https://www.alanbilzerian.com/) has been a staple in the Massachusetts fashion community for over 5 decades, and continues to make an impact in the fashion industry globally. After getting his Bachelor’s of Science in Finance from Nichols College, Bilzerian found his love for fashion through a post-grad Europe trip. He shifted focus professionally and soon opened Body Shop in 1967 in Worcester, Massachusetts with his wife Bê.

*“We started in 1967, and over the years I grew out of being one in a group of people in a routine. My idea was to get out of this system of retail and explore my own way of looking for new ideas. I traveled Europe and saw a chance to separate myself from the rest of the pack. We started to make a few things and buy them and it turned into something very successful. The attraction of what people really wanted kept making me go back. It was feeding into my satisfaction with what I had started... It was initially selling Issey Miyake in the 70s in Worcester, Massachusetts.” - Alan Bilzerian*

Body Shop was a fresh and new perspective towards fashion in the ‘60s and ‘70s, stocked with printed corduroy trousers, bellbottomed Landlubber jeans and velvet Western shirts. It allowed Bilzerian to expand his imagination for fashion retail, breaking barriers and pioneering new directions in fashion. 

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After 13 years in Worcester, Bilzerian and Bê decided to shift the business to the heart of Boston, as they relocated to Newbury Street in 1980 and renamed the storefront Alan Bilzerian. With a keen eye for emerging designers and brands, Alan Bilzerian was one of the first shops to showcase the works of Walter Albini, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Giorgio Armani, Katherine Hamnett, Rick Owens, Alexander McQueen and Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons. Alan and Bê worked extensively to introduce Japan’s “Big 3” to the Western world, and developed deep personal relationships with Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto. This helped the designers access a new audience on the other side of the world, as collectors and enthusiasts devoted their attention to the brands that Bilzerian showcased. 

Alan and Bê also kept a close eye on European fashion, as they purchased Alexander McQueen’s premiere collection and John Galliano’s graduate pieces for their store in Boston. They were also strong supporters of Martin Margiela’s initial collections, bringing the Belgium designers’ genius perspectives to Boston and beyond. 

Alan and Bê have devoted their lives to curating tasteful and timeless fashion collections to their clients and community. However, they are not focused on the commercialization of clothing. Their goal from the beginning was to showcase creativity through fashion and build a genuine community. 57 years later, their goal has not changed.

The ARCHIVE.pdf team was given the opportunity to interview Alan and Bê on a crisp Boston Saturday morning while capturing some of the most iconic and never-seen-before moments in the two’s journey in fashion. We are very excited to showcase this interview and let Alan and Bê tell their amazing stories. It’s time to give them their flowers.

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**Hello, Alan. Hi, Bê.**

**Bê:** Nice to meet you. 

**Nice to meet you again. It's been a while, so you wouldn't remember me. How have you been?**

**Alan:** I'm not bad. I'm hanging in there, for an old man. 

**It's a matter of perspective, isn't it? Well, tell me a brief history of the store. How did you two meet?**

**Bê:** We met in Paris. And then... [some] years go by. We met again because I was in Italy working for Fibucci, which I'm sure you don't know but he was like one of the big new upcoming stores in Milan. And he asked me to redesign his shop in Milan. So, I came with my friend, we came to the States. We were going around and I wanted to make his store into a diner, an American diner. So, that's when I met Alan again. 

**You think that it was meant to be, that you two both had interest in fashion?**

**Alan:** In fact, yeah. I was looking for velvet jeans in the late ‘60s – ‘68, ‘69 – and I was in a showroom in Paris and I asked the guy I was working with, ‘Do you know anybody that carries [an] unusual small production that I can bring back that's exciting?’ So, he gave me an address on the back of a match book and I got in a taxi. I'm in the taxi, I'm going, ‘Oh shit, I'm going to get screwed on this one.’ And he takes me to this residential area in Paris. 

In the back of the house that I was dropped off at was an incredibly beautiful small factory. I went in the factory, opened the door and they were making these incredible dresses in suede, very, very Native American but much more sophisticated. 

I wanted to redo everything and the woman said, ‘Can you wait a minute? I'll call the designer.’ I'm there for about 40 minutes and in comes the designer. I said, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to change this.’ At the end of the conversation with the woman who owned the factory, she said to me, ‘Are you going back to Paris?’

And I said yes. And she said, ‘I'll give you a lift.’ So, we got in her mini-moke and we drove into Paris together– we were both with other people [at the time]. But when we drove up to her house, there were three people standing in front of her apartment that were very close friends of mine. When we drove up, they were going, ‘Hey Bilzerian, what are you doing?’

**Bê:** At that time I had a band of musicians from New York staying in my place in Paris. So that's why those friends that he knew from New York were staying with me, and they were surprised to see him, and he was surprised to see the band. 

Hat selection inside Alan Bilzerian includes TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist.

Avant garde clothing displayed inside the Alan Bilzerian store. 

Carol Christian Poell: Disparate black gloves, drip rubbered gloves, fingerless gloves. 

Coats and outerwear hanging on racks inside the Alan Bilzerian store. 

Japanese and avant garde designer items displayed inside the Alan Bilzerian store. 

**That's an amazing story. So you had the store set up before you even went on that trip to Paris? You've been going to Paris for a while.**

**Alan:** Yes. I've been going for quite a few years. I started in 1967, going to London. Well, that's when we first opened, in 1967, and a year and a half after we opened I said, ‘There's not enough here for me.’ So I started to travel to Europe by myself and I did England, France, and Italy, and I started to do Fair Isle sweaters. I don't know if you know Fair Isle sweaters– very, very beautiful. They're very valuable now because nobody does it anymore. And I was collecting all kinds of unusual clothing from the ‘30s. I brought things to Margaret Howell and Jean Howell to remake, because they had the capacity to do that. But I kept on going back every time I had a season to change. And when we started, [it was] in a tiny little shop. It was $115 a month [to] rent– I can't forget these figures. 

And it just progressed and progressed, and it absorbed my way of working. And I got to know Europe better than any of the [other] companies. 

**Bê:** That was good for you. Back in those days, the American generation was not traveling to Europe that much. It was an unknown territory, for you to go on vacation with your parents, but you don't go for work to research. 

And Alan has a very big bug about trying to find things. He loved to go hunting. That's his passion. He still loves to go hunting for interesting things, new things. That's why he still became known as having new things, different things, things that you would not expect. When we met in Milan after we were together, I introduced Alan to Prada. He had a store in Worcester, and he was the first one to have Prada in the US. People don't even know who the hell he was. 

**Alan:** Prada was selling me keychains.

**Yeah, I thought they started as a luggage outfit. **

**Bê:** Prada was working in her father's shop in the Galleria Passarella, and she was making jewelry for the store. That was her first passion, way back then. 

**Because they go by families. A lot of those historical families, especially in Western Europe, were multi-generational. So they would inherit the father’s [business]. **

**Bê:** Yeah, you pass them down. Some of them continue successfully, and some are not capable [of continuing]: It's stuck with the parents because the new generation doesn't know how to carry on. 

**Right, right. It's not unusual because Hermes has been, I don't know, maybe three centuries… So is that the same case for you? Riviere told me that you started the shop.**

**Alan:** No, In 1967 I opened a shop called Body Shop, and that's where it started, with $115– tiny little shop. 

**And your father was in real estate? **

**Alan:** Yeah, my dad was in real estate and I was very bored with what he was doing and I wanted to do something completely off the floor. Five years later we moved to a little bit larger store and it was called Moon. When we moved here, we put it under my name. 

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**What was the reasoning behind putting it under your name? You think it had more prestige doing it that way?**

**Bê:** It was me who instigated that. We were driving looking for a location, and we found a location and Alan said, ‘Should we keep calling the store Moon or should we find a new name?’ 

**Alan:** At that time it started to be too much related to the moonies. 

**Oh, right, Reverend Moon. **

**Alan:** Yeah, exactly. And it was sort of… uncomfortable. 

**Bê:** That's when I told Alan, I said, ‘I don't like any of those names that don't represent anything. Use your name.’ And he said, ‘are you sure? You know, my name is pretty strong. It's very ethnic.’ I said, ‘Who cares? I know that a name is good if you become successful. If you're not successful, the name is not good and it doesn't matter.’ 

**Al:** That's true, that's very motivating. But how did you come about starting the store in Worcester instead of Boston? Or Boston was an evolution of the store in Worcester? 

**Alan:** The Boston store was an evolution of Worcester. It drove me absolutely nuts to have people coming into the store and saying, ‘I had to come from Philadelphia; I had to come from Maine; I had to come from Vermont…’ Every day. Everybody said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And it actually worked on me: I got a beating every day. Plus, there were so many things emerging, where I missed out on a lot that we should have had. 

**Bê:** The city has a limitation. 

**Alan:** Yeah, you're talking about a city of 250,000 compared to a real city. They don't even have an airport. They have an airport on a thimble, a needle head. I mean, people brought their own planes to come and shop in our store. But I thought in my mind that the city would grow in the speed that I was growing. But it never really came about. 

**So as a consumer it was sort of like a treasure hunt, but as a business person it was very limiting. **

**Alan:** Well, yeah, it was. I would be so excited to bring these things to the shop and then it went… it was just an emotional flatness. I was exhausted by the excitement of what I was trying to drive through the customer… They didn't really care. I can't blame them. I mean, they're not doing what I'm doing. And so I just said this is not working for my psychic exposure. 

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Bê and Alan Bilzerian stand outside their namesake store, which has run out of Boston since 1980. 

**You had the establishment in Boston for how long now? **

**Alan:** We opened in 1980. So from 1980 to 2024, it's been an incredible ride. 

**Bê:** And it was really a perfect storm. It's all because we moved in ‘80 to Newbury Street. The real estate people told us, ‘You are crazy, you should move here. There's nothing happening.’

**Alan:** Yeah. This is the worst block. 

**Bê:** And I said, ‘I'm going to stay here.’ It's better to be in a place that is a little bit exclusive than instead being in the crowd there.

But that year, I was invited by the president of Issey Miyiake to come to Japan to go to the hot spring. It was a perfect situation– I really wanted to go to Japan because I felt like something [was] going on there. Because at that time we had the Walkman coming from Japan, we had all the high tech DVDs, and everything was in black... I really wanted to know what was going on, so I went to Tokyo. 

[Alan] opened the store, he was busy. [When] I arrived in Japan, a friend of mine called me at the hotel. He said, ‘There's a dinner party. I want you to come.’ I just landed after 15 hours. He said, ‘Just take a shower and come.’ So I went to dinner, and he introduced me to Rei Kawakubo from Comme Des Garçons. 

**Alan:** They hadn't come to Europe yet. 

**Bê:** This is before they debuted. And she invited me to her showroom the next couple of days to go and look at her clothes, her collection. 

I went there and I was out of my mind. I wanted everything. And she said, ‘Just tell me what you want, and we’ll ship it to you.’ At the end, I said, ‘You should go to Paris and do the show. Your collection's incredible.’ And she said, ‘Will you give me some names? Who to invite to my show? If I do the show in Paris, who should I invite?’ I said, ‘I'll send you a list of stores in the US that you should invite, and the press that I know in Paris.’ The rest of the week, I went with Mr. Tada from Issey Miyake to the hot spring. 

Then, I came back to Tokyo and I was with the director of Isetan, which was the big department store. He showed me the store and I saw in the corner [on a] stand, I looked at the thing and, my God, these trousers are so unusual, they're really nice. I asked everybody around me, ‘Do you know this company?’ The ticket only said waist, nothing else.

Nobody knew. I finally got an address. The taxi drove me there, and it was on the outskirts of Tokyo. I went into that shop and there was an older lady who received me and she was very rough. She said only two, three words of English. ‘Sit down and wait.’ And then a little bit after, the director came in. He took me to the showroom, it was a warehouse kind of place. I saw all those things and I went crazy. I said, ‘This is the best thing that could happen to me. This is unbelievable. You guys have to be showing this, nobody knows you exist.’ And he said, ‘Just put everything you like in a box and we ship it to you.’

Then he said, ‘Will you sit here? The designer wants to meet you.’ The designer shows up. It was Yohji [Yamamoto].

And we sat down and talked about fashion; about everything. And then the director said, ‘Bê, can you stay an extra day? Because of Japanese law, we have to have documentation.’ 

**Alan:** It's very complicated. Because at that time there were quotas on each particular fabric. So anyway, you had a file for a license to ship to America. 

**Bê:** So anyway, I said, ‘I fly tomorrow, but I'm going to see. I have to tell my husband I'm not going to be home tomorrow.’ And he put out the phone and said, ‘Call your husband.’

I called [Alan] and said, ‘I found this incredible collection, it's going to be better than when we found Armani years ago. It's so new, It's so different. I have to stay.’ 

Alan said, ‘I don't care what the hell you do. They just stole my Porsche.’ Click. [Laughs] And Yohji started laughing, and he said, ‘I like your husband. I want to meet him.‘

**Did you find the Porsche?**

**Alan:** Well, what happened was half an hour after I went to the front of the building, then to the back, [I said] I know I parked it here. Two minutes later, the phone rings. It's the police: they said they're coming down to arrest me. They said, ‘Your car was in a hit and run.’ 

**Bê:** So anyway, Yohji and Mr. Hayashi organized to ship everything. And I came home with all those boxes, and I'm telling you, we opened the box and it was like a fire was happening. Customers were coming in, going crazy. That's when we were at number 12. 

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**I thought you were in this spot?**

**Alan:** No no, we were at number 12 because we moved in 1980. We were open for only four years and then I bought this building. So we had to wait till the leases ran out and then redo the building, and then move the store from 12 to 34. 

**Bê:** So that's when Yohji and Rei started showing in Paris. 

**Alan:** It was perfect timing, it was absolutely perfect timing. 

**Bê:** The Yohji collection was all black, Rei was all black. And the first show they did, Women's Wear Daily, had the front page with the big name, ‘Sarunaya,’ bag lady because they had a sweater. So nobody was ready to accept this invasion of fashion from Japan. 

**And it was very racially charged too because the title was ‘Hiroshima Chic.’ It was a very famous title for them. **

**Alan:** Well they didn't want to give them a vehicle. [John] Fairchild hated the way they had all of a sudden emerged. And [Yohji and Rei] never spent any money on advertising. So they didn't want to actually give them any position. 

**Bê:** Fairchild resisted because Rei and Yohji went to Paris, and Paris embraced them. The French recognized that before New York, and the explosion happened there. [In America], they said, ‘Oh no, we're not into that; the bag lady, the clothes are not clothes, they are trash.’ 

But the consumer here didn't care about the price. They were into it. I mean, it was insane. And that vehicle made us even stronger. We were the first store in Boston [to carry them]. People, even from New York, were coming here. 

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**The stereotype nationwide is that Boston is a very conservative city, and I would assume back then it was a different atmosphere compared to that. **

**Alan:** No, no. It was very, very conservative. It was just that there were pinpoints of timing. People were reading about it, they were waiting for this to happen. They didn't know where it was going to be, who had it, who was going to be the first. We just happened to have the perfect timing of having the emotion to say, you know, I have a feeling something is happening in Japan. 

Before that, when we met Mr. Tada, who was the president of Issey, I went to the first show in Paris of Issey. It was in the basement of La Coupole, a huge restaurant. It was like 8:30 in the morning, I was dragging my ass to the show. I saw the show and I'm going, are you kidding me? I was so inspired and after the show I went backstage and I said I want this from my store in Worcester. It was in Worcester we started Issey. 

**Rest in peace, it is too bad he passed away. **

**Alan:** Yeah, yeah, great friend. He gave this dinner in Paris and he only invited one store out of all the people that were there, everybody else was press. 

**Bê:** It was his birthday. 

**Alan:** It was kind of like, the way I started as a hippie with long hair, and looking for the most unusual, and found Issey. We had Issey in 1968, 1969, in Worcester, with Prada, [and] Armani Black Label. 

**Bê:** But then here in 1980, with Rei and Yohji, it made us even more hungry to go hunting. I mean, we've been lucky, but it was very interesting to find an unknown designer that has something to say, that maybe we suspect it, but we don't know what it is.

At that time in Boston– maybe it's a coincidence and it's just a perfect situation– it was a lot of professional people, architects and people in the art field or design field, who were really interested to find us, and what we discovered gave them inspiration, and gave them energy, even in their field. 

**Alan:** You know, it was very interesting. Constantly people from Harvard, constantly people from MIT. It's still the meeting road. Architecture and design and fashion are still crossing us all the time. When I want to be inspired, I buy a new architectural book to see who is putting something in Brazil, who's making something anywhere in the world. It can't be just Italian or Japanese. 

Alan Bilzerian walks the runway at Yohji Yamamoto Spring / Summer 1994. 

Alan Bilzerian attends Maison Martin Margiela's debut show, Spring 1989 at the Cafe De La Gare in Paris.

**Do you think the ‘70s and ‘80s were the “golden age of Boston cutting edge fashion”?**

**Alan:** The ‘80s for us were so fantastic. We felt that we had something that nobody could really duplicate, and it was so far out compared to what everybody was wearing. Nobody wanted to make the attempt to go towards that. They didn't know what was coming. They didn't know the feeling that was emerging…. It just kept on getting bigger. Kept on getting stronger. 

**I was curious about how folks that were older than I was, how they happened to adapt in the environment on Newbury Street; how Alan Bilzerian, and maybe a couple of other shops, fostered this environment of fashion around the ‘80s. **

**Alan:** It was two completely different pictures. We had a completely different symbol of who we were at that time, because we really instigated that entire image of the Japanese. Between Rei, Issey, and Yohji, which were the three pioneers coming to Europe and showing [that] they were the depth in Japanese fashion, we didn't deviate from that. We were committed. 

**Bê:** We got so involved with Yohji that he wanted to meet Alan, and the relationship developed into a friendship and then he asked us, ‘Can you help me? I want to open a store in London. Can you do it? Can you help me?’

So we ran around looking for the perfect place for Yohji. We put down the idea on paper of what we wanted, he said, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ I said ‘Can you tell me, do you want the store to black? You want it white?’

He said, ‘I don’t know, you do it.’ [Laughs] So we opened London and New York at the same time.

**Alan:** We became very close friends. Many times he stayed in our house, when Bê wasn't feeling well. After a show, he got on a plane and went back to Tokyo and called me up and he said, ‘I'm going to be in Boston next week.’

**Bê:** He came just overnight to see me because I was very sick. 

**Alan:** Rei and him came here when they were together. They came and spent the weekend with us. That was a long time ago. 

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Isaac Sellam black passager bag on display at Alan Bilzerian. 

Rick Owens black leather shearling-lined biker jacket on display inside Alan Bilzerian. 

Hats displayed on top of a shelf inside the Alan Bilzerian store. 

Detail shot of custom Alan Bilzerian hangers. 

**How do you feel about those designs becoming the mainstream? Do you think that's a good thing? **

**Alan:** They're really not so mainstream. You know what I mean? They're individuals that are always going to be separated from the bunch. Maybe with some of the secondary things that they've done–

**Like Commes Des Garçons Play. **

**Alan:** Exactly. 

**Bê:** Or like Yohji does Y-3. So that is more mainstream, and that will be more exposed. 

**Alan:** I think that these people are the essence of unusual aspects of taking fabric or understanding… They're very conscious of the street. They're very, very modern in a lot of ways. 

**What I love about those designs is the intensity and the detail to the craft is what I find very attractive. The Japanese aesthetic. There was one example of a business that's been around for 400 years, and all they sold was Gyoza or something, only one item. **

**Alan:** And then, they just focus on that one thing. Making it better. 

**And just reiterate, reiterate. Like this here, the average designer wouldn't think about putting a back button to reinforce. And you know how long I’ve had this jacket? **

**Alan:** They've taken every single 1940s or 1930s piece that's ever been made apart. And they've gone through the waistbands, the interfacing, all the actual aspects that make the piece not look on the outside very good, but the inside better. 

And that's one of the keys of success with them, where people say, ‘this is my favorite piece of clothing. What do you have that I can continue with that's exactly like that?’ You know how hard that is to tell somebody, ‘we don't have anything? We don't have another thousand dollar pair of pants?’ That's part of the whole rhythm of what they do. 

**Well they're not alone, right? Because their influence transcended to other designers from other nations like Ann Demuelemeester, Dirk Bikkembergs… **

**Alan:** Margiela.

**And you've got the ones like Poelle, right? What do you think about that designer? **

**Alan:** Oh, Carol's a completely different project. Carol's on a completely different wave. I bought Carol's first collection 35 or 40 years ago— I stumble on these things. The nose or something tells me where the smell is and I find it. 

**From Austria, right? **

**Alan:** Yeah. I bought his first collection, this guy that I knew had it, and we bought it and it was absolutely incredible. Then he went through some kind of… I don't know what he wanted. And then he reinvented himself again and we were there to continue with him. And now he's like, the god for the kids. 

**Bê:** And you have people that emerge like that, like Maurizio [Altieri], we used to go and buy his shoes and his clothes. Maurizio from Carpe Diem. 

Carol Christian Poell leather boots and drip sneakers on display inside Alan Bilzerian: Ice-Dart Handled Sneaker, U-Officer Prosthetic, Black Tornado Zip Boots, U-Boot Prosthetic, U-Jack Prosthetic Boot

An up-close look at Carol Christian Poell leather boots and drip sneakers on display inside Alan Bilzerian: U-Officer Prosthetic, Black Tornado Zip Boots, U-Boot Prosthetic, U-Jack Prosthetic Boot

**What brands excite you? **

**Alan:** I think still Japanese small companies keep on emerging as technical and fabric-oriented. The best denim in the world is coming from Japan. There's a whole area, like Worcester would be, where denim is being made in Tokyo. That's where every beautiful piece of selvage denim is being made. 

So you can't say that Japan is already played; that tune is not going away. They work so much harder to make something, like the knife handle that's been made for 400 years. These people will make the best fitting jean in the best fabric that they can, and they won't give the indigo dye formula to anybody. When they die you've got to come up and make your own formula, you have to find the root and make your own dye. And if you can’t find the color that they've been [using] to make the denim so beautiful, too bad. That's your problem. 

**Bê:** But I also think that because there's so many names, and so many big names everywhere, you can be in Milan, or in Paris, or on Madison Avenue; everything's the same. 

**Alan:** People keep on coming into the store and saying, ‘You know I'm so bored with seeing the same merchandise in every store.’. 

The success of what we are about is hard work. It's hard work. You go to Europe. We don't go to a show, we're going to pound the pavement, to be exposed [to] basically everything that we can totally feel that there's gonna be longevity. 

I met Margiela, before Margiela was ‘Margiela’, because he worked for Gaultier. When I met him, I knew what he had done, and then I went to his first show. We bought it for Worcester. We sold 12% before sale [Laughs]. I couldn't even swallow, and I said, ‘Oh shit, this is unbelievably bad.’ So sometimes you're not on the road to where the consumer is. 

**Bê:** If you want to make a lot of money, you go mainstream. We are not.

**It can't be just the money. It has to be something else. **

**Alan**: It's the passion. It's the emotion. It was always the stimulation, more than having a big, beautiful store. I mean, Barney's did their thing, and it’s sad that they're not around, because people need to see different images of big and small. 

**Would you say that your primary customer respects you and stays with you over all this time because they know the amount of work that it takes? Is it trial and error? **

**Alan:** I think they're committed to us because they feel that the staff has the same allegiance [to them] as the designer has to us. You know, we're family on both sides. We're family to the designer, and family to our staff, and the consumer reads that. The people who shop here all the time, they see the same stability. 

**Bê:** We have customers who have been shopping here for 30 years. You know, a customer from Boston, she went through a very hard time health-wise. Our staff after work would go and visit her, on their time. 

Then they come here, the customer comes here and we treat them with respect and the consideration of, you know, their advice. It's something that you can’t have in department [stores], it's very difficult to cultivate that. 

**Yeah, sustainability, right? **

**Bê:** Talking about the time when Boston was so hot, that’s when we decided to ask Jean-Paul Gaultier to do a fashion show in Boston. That was very special. Jean-Paul came in at that time, he gave carte blanche to do the whole thing on our own. He shipped the collection, and he flew from Tokyo to Boston that day to come to the show. 

**Alan:** That was a great time. 

**Bê:** Back in those days, we could do those things. It was very interesting. 

Yohji Yamamoto black and white asymmetrical puff-sleeve collarless women's jacket from alanbilzerian.com

Carol Christian Poell flat half-circle four pocket ripple-effect jeans with scar stitching from alanbilzerian.com

Avant Garde Elena Dawson silk velvet blazer outerwear in olive from alanbilzerian.com

**So how's the evolution in your eyes, from since you opened the store until now? What's your overall feeling about the whole fashion world?**

**Alan:** I think people are very interested. I think the new generation is very, very conscious of how they look. I think there's always going to be, even if you're on your phone all day long, I think people are still very, very interested… There's an evolution, though. 

**Bê:** There was a gap at one point, that the young generation, I mean what we call the young, was not as interested. But then now is the rebirth of young people, but really young– 17, 18– who are really passionate about real fashion. 

**Alan:** Yeah, it was a little stop gap there. 

**Bê:** The gap was because that generation was so focused on social media that they lost the value of real— the identity of fashion— activity. 

**Alan:** That's what happened. That period was very strange. It was almost like a numb period. Everybody was numb with social media. 

**Bê:** And then the real creativity kind of was numb, too. Now it's like a rebirth. The energy in music, in fashion, in sport, in everything, is so new.

**People are realizing they need to touch more than visualize the product. **

**Alan:** Well, they're just getting through the massage of COVID.

**Bê:** We just hired a young girl who graduated from university. She's 24, 25, and she said to me at the interview that she wished she didn’t have social media anymore. She wanted to cancel her account. She said it invaded her life, and she doesn't want that anymore. 

**Well, you know, like my son, he wants to invest in archival products, like the camera, [and the] fashion. And it's the same thing for music collectors. They want to get the vinyl records. The same thing. They want to see the history. **

**Alan:** They want to go back and really trace where this whole thing came from. They want to know, they want to understand. They can't even believe that we're still using Macintosh and JBL speakers. We're like from goddamn, the cave land. They go, ‘is that what's playing this music?’ Because everybody's synthetic. There's no depth in what we really see in people. 

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Letting Alan and Bê tell their amazing stories. It’s time to give them their flowers.

From Boston to the World: A Conversation With Alan & Bê Bilzerian

Born in Tokyo in 1943, Yohji Yamamoto’s childhood was defined by war and global politics. As the son of a war widow, Yamamoto naturally rebelled against the ongoing nationalist culture and pursued the arts, helping his mother Fumi Yamamoto with her small dressmaking shop in Tokyo. The rebellion continued as he developed a passion for martial arts during his early schooling and studies at Bunka Fashion College. His relationships with karate instructor Richard Amos and dance choreographer Pina Bausch elevated his love for martial arts. Before his collaboration with adidas and the creation of Y-3, Yamamoto became a black belt in karate and began to connect his passion for martial arts to his fashion endeavors. With the sportswear titan, Yohji Yamamoto would reintroduce and redefine several silhouettes that focused on boxing, martial arts, and karate. 

Two decades later, these silhouettes have paved the next chapter of adidas Originals: a Low-Profile future.

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Growing up in the rough, gang-ridden neighborhoods of Tokyo, Yohji Yamamoto practiced judo for self-defense. He first went to Yodobashi Police Station to learn from a detective in the juvenile division. Then, when he transferred to Gyosei, a Catholic School, Yamamoto was mocked for being a weak kid. This motivated him to attend Kodokan, a head temple of judo in Central Tokyo to further his skills. However, after graduating from Bunka Fashion College and debuting his namesake brand in Tokyo and Paris, Yohji Yamamoto became too busy to continue his martial arts journey. 

Eight years after the brand’s Paris debut in 1981, Yohji Yamamoto became tired of making clothes; his weight plummeted to around 35kg (77lbs). The constant airplane rides for work were painful for Yamamoto, as work overshadowed his health. Meanwhile, an unexpected connection began to bloom: Yohji’s mother, Fumi Yamamoto, befriended a young British karate instructor who had relocated to Tokyo to train at the headquarters of the Japan Karate Association. The instructor, Richard Amos, started teaching Mrs. Yamamoto English in exchange for home-cooked meals. The more time Amos spent with Fumi-san, the closer he became with the Yamamoto household.

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In 1992, Vogue reached out to Yohji Yamamoto for an article about his life outside of the rigorous fashion schedule. Work had consumed Yamamoto, and at that point, there was little beyond work in his life – he had nothing to say. Searching for an answer, Yamamoto reached out to Richard Amos to do a staged karate performance. The shoot took place during an instructor’s class, and Yamamoto reignited his passion for martial arts. He immediately wanted to train with Amos. The first sessions began in the basement of his Tokyo home, and Yamamoto could barely get through the warmup stretch because he was so out of shape. As they continuously pushed the limits of Yohji’s body, Yamamoto rekindled his childhood love for martial arts and trained four sessions a week. He created a formal JKA (Japanese Karate Association) dojo in his home and named it Azabu-shibu. The brand’s staff joined the weekly training sessions, and Azabu-shibu slowly became a hub for the intelligentsia of Tokyo via Yamamoto’s or Amos’ respective communities. After 5 years, Yohji Yamamoto became a Black Belt in karate and established a beautiful balance between his work and his health. He utilized karate to strengthen his body and mind, falling in love with the artful tension that exists in the serious competition of the sport. 

“I prefer practicing kata (set patterns of movements against an imaginary opponent) rather than kumite (actual combat), and as I'm rather small, I like the fast katas like unsu or empi. My favorite movements are the mawashi-geri (circular kick) or the mawashi-empi uchi (circular poke with the elbow).” - Yohji Yamamoto, New York Times - Side Kick (March 2004)

Yohji Yamamoto (Source: MyClothingArchive)

Yohji Yamamoto and Richard Amos (Source: Facebook)

Another major influence on Yohji Yamamoto during his life journey was Pina Bausch. Born in 1940 in Solingen, Germany, Bausch was a dancer and choreographer who helped pioneer the neo-expressionist dance tradition, Tanztheater. When Yamamoto saw Bausch perform, he was in total shock. To him, she represented the perfect silhouette and essence of body movement. Bausch became a muse for Yamamoto and inspired the Spring Summer 1990 collection, fully dedicated to dance. 

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In 1998, Bausch asked Yamamoto to contribute to the 25th anniversary of her dance company in her German hometown, Wuppertal. With no hesitation, Yamamoto pitched “an improvised competitive performance between the physical expression of a dance and karate,” bridging their two worlds together in harmony. For the show, he designed outfits for each of her dancers and brought a group of martial arts experts to collaborate with the performance; Yamamoto even joined the dancers on stage to perform karate. 

The celebration was a beautiful showcase of Bausch’s and Yamamoto’s life passions. 

I-D Magazine No.184 - March 1999 - The Kinetic Issue (Yohji & Karate) (Source: MyClothingArchive)

The new millennium introduced a unique relationship to the industry: adidas and Yohji Yamamoto. Initially attracted by the imagery of the 3-stripes of the sportswear titan, Yamamoto resonated with the philosophy that adidas continuously showcased through their commitment to ordinary people, not just fashion specialists. He believed in the brand’s philosophy of honoring their original identity and history.

Yamamoto also connected with the low-profile, minimalist silhouettes that adidas was releasing during this period. He added his own vision to these shoes, creating a new perspective on the low-profile adidas models. The first style was the boxing boot, which featured the Yohji Yamamoto signature embroidered on the lateral side panels, a Satin padded tongue, unique materials, and innovative color-blocking. They were worn by models in the FW2001 show, blending the shoe with asymmetrical blousons, wrap style dresses, and oversized tailored coats. The models were dressed for the fashion runway as well as a martial arts sporting competition. This was also one of the first times the fashion runway featured sneakers from a global footwear brand. The relationship was slowly blooming. 


Yohji Yamamoto FW2001 Runway Show featuring newly created boxing shoe (Source: Vogue)

The adidas SM-II, later renamed the adidas Taekwondo, was a silhouette dedicated to martial arts. The original pairs, first released in 2000, featured an adidas Martial Arts logo, Made in Korea tag, a top lace above the tongue shroud for security, and the famous leather 3D quilting on the toe. The 2003 rendition of the model, the adidas Mei Taekwondo, was a low-profile split-outsole training shoe with a distinct holed tongue. These silhouettes would inspire Yamamoto to create a version named after his initials: YY Mei Brocade.

adidas 'YY Mei Brocade' captured in the adidas Archive

adidas 'YY Mei Brocade' and adidas 'Taekwondo' captured in the adidas Archive

adidas 'SM-II' captured at adidas Makerlab

adidas 'Taekwondo' captured at adidas Makerlab

adidas 'Taekwondo' Archive Blue (Source: Hartcopy)

adidas 'Mei Taekwondo' (Source: Hartcopy)

The adidas YY Mei Brocade featured a split-soled adidas Mei tooling with a fancy Brocade fabric upper. Each pair was unique due to the difference in the pattern of the fabric; no pair shared the same pattern. Initially featured on the runway in the Yohji Yamamoto Women’s SS2002 show, this shoe furthered the relationship between adidas and Yamamoto because this was one of the first times a lifestyle segment was introduced that bridged the gap between fashion and sportswear. Their goal was to revolutionize that relationship with Yohji Yamamoto. 

adidas 'YY Mei Brocade' (Source: MyClothingArchive)

adidas 'YY Mei Brocade' (Source: Vogue Italia)

The relationship started with a request for footwear for a runway show. Adidas later requested Yamamoto’s creative expertise for their athleticwear. This led to the development of an entire line, and later led to the creation of Y-3. The collaboration built the foundations for contemporary fashion athleticwear and helped establish a stronger bridge between the fashion runways and the everyday sports. While pioneering fashion athleticwear with Y-3 in the 2000s, Yamamoto became the Chairman of the KWF (Karatenomichi World Federation), an international non-profit karate organization with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. In 2007, he provided opening remarks for the 4th KWF World Cup, an international karate tournament. Not only was Yamamoto impacting the fashion and footwear industry, he continued to develop his martial arts community.

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As adidas and Yamamoto furthered their partnership through the 2010s, the martial arts and karate references continued. For the AW2010 runway show, which took place on Valentine’s Day in the Park Avenue Armory theater in New York, Yamamoto saved his best performance for last. He concluded the fashion show with a martial arts fight with fellow designer Jeremy Scott. As they dueled in the middle of the runway stage, it brought back memories of young Yamamoto in the Yodobashi Police Station, Kodokan, and Azabu-shibu with Richard Amos. Yohji ultimately won the fight with a final karate-chop, only to be swiftly taken out by Danish fashion model Freja Beha.

Yamamoto and Y-3 have referenced martial arts in their footwear creations as well. The 2019 Y-3 adidas Taekwondo W was a laceless slip-on low-profile sneaker created for women. With a strong resemblance to the original adidas Taekwondo and YY Mei Brocade, Yamamoto approached this silhouette through the minimalist Y-3 scope. He had this same approach with the Y-3 Boxing Trainers, a shoe inspired by the classic boxing footwear staple, but reimagined with a low-top cut and low-profile rubber outsole. 

All of these silhouettes in the Yohji Yamamoto and Y-3 portfolio are vital precursors to the reintroduction of the Low-Profile family by the adidas Originals team. Styles such as the adidas Mei and adidas Taekwondo play a big role in the Low-Profile storytelling, as the branding remains consistent with the original silhouettes from the adidas archive – the minimalist approach remains the same, decades later. By embracing the legacy and history of these shoes, Yamamoto and adidas are able to tell honest, full-circle stories through their creations. These stories follow Yamamoto’s journey as a Black Belt in karate as well as adidas’ journey through martial arts and the fashion runway.

Two decades later, these silhouettes have paved the next chapter of adidas Originals: a Low-Profile future.

ArtV

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