Celluloid Threads
In his memoir, My Dear Bomb, Yohji Yamamoto explains how much he admires the body of work built by director Takeshi Kitano - particularly “the empty gasps in space” found in those movies. “In the places where he wants a message to get across, he intentionally does not insert that message,” he writes. Recognizing Kitano’s willingness to follow the artist’s intuition, his restless creative spirit, and his keen sense for the “dignity of violence,” Yamamoto declared himself a “Takeshi Kitano nut” in the mid-90s.
“The costumes for a film have to be subordinate to the vision as it appears in the script. They must never outshine the script. [...] If they aren’t handled carefully, the costumes for a film can overshadow the hero. So in my case, it would probably be better to have me do the film score instead.”
Even before collaborating with Yamamoto, Takeshi Kitano seemingly always put substantial effort into costume design. May it be the meticulous vintage Americana styles in A Scene at the Sea, vibrantly colorful floral shirts in Sonatine, or the razor-sharp tailoring in Hana-bi - Yamamoto later mentioned the latter two as his favorite Kitano films. He had a distinct awareness of the costumes being an integral tool to fulfill his precise aesthetic vision and creative voice. When the director approached Yohji Yamamoto and proposed working together on the costumes for Brother - Kitano’s first not comprehensively Japanese film - in 1999, the director allegedly told him that “in Hollywood movies, they even spend a fortune on the costumes for the minor characters.” He wanted to see what Yamamoto could achieve with those kinds of resources in the genre of costume design. Apparently, he appealed to the fashion designer’s curiosity and creative ambition. In the following years, Yohji Yamamoto was responsible for costume design on three Takeshi Kitano movies.
Brother (2000)
Takeshi Kitano during costume fittings for Brother at Yohji Yamamoto’s atelier.
Source: Yohji Yamamoto - My Dear Bomb
While it is a classic Kitano gangster movie in many respects, Brother represents firsts in two other ways. It was Kitano’s premier film set outside of Japan and the first Kitano project with costume design by Yohji Yamamoto. The movie follows Aniki Yamamoto (coincidence?) - a yakuza exiled to Los Angeles - as he tries to establish himself in a new territory within his brother’s gang. Wardrobe-wise, a lot of Yamamoto-typical, loose-fitting tailoring is put into stark contrast against the late 90s hip-hop-inspired street style of local Los Angeles gangs. Kitano himself is mainly seen in a black, wide-shouldered suit, a spread-collar shirt, and black sunglasses - seemingly the same pair he wore in Hana-bi. In My Dear Bomb, Yamamoto writes that he evaluates his work for Brother as a better outcome than his costumes for Dolls concerning “the relationship between the costumes and the film”.
Dolls (2002)
Sketch for Dolls costumes by Yohji Yamamoto.
Source: Yohji Yamamoto - My Dear Bomb
Dolls cover puppeteering as its overarching motif - strikingly illustrated by a red rope connecting three couples. A young businessman and his jilted fiancée; an old yakuza and the girl he abandoned thirty years ago; a defaced pop star and a manically devoted fan of hers; the film tells the stories of their respective searching journeys and explores the intricacies of their complicated relationships. With almost no dialogue, Kitano relies heavily on his keen cinematographic eye while granting Yamamoto’s exceptionally captivating costume design significant space. In many ways, it is a more “traditionally Japanese” film than most of Kitano’s other work. Its overall aesthetic takes inspiration from the Japanese folklore puppet-theater art form called bunraku. The layered silk kimonos were modeled after puppet costumes that are characteristic of the folklore tradition, and most of the other costumes are made of rugged and heavily textured fabrics like felt or knitted wool. They have been worn-in to softness, shaped by their rough environment, reflecting how the character’s experiences have shaped them.
Takeshis’ (2005)
As an uber-meta and surreal autobiographical film, Takeshis’, references most of Kitano’s catalog while putting a satirizing, self-deprecating spin on it. He plays himself as well as a (bleach blonde) alter ego who struggles to find success as an actor in his own right. If it is not clear by now that this movie is mainly for Takeshi Kitano fans, its tagline “500% Kitano” should erase any remaining ambiguities. Takeshis’ is like a bizarre cabinet of curiosities. Just one example: there is a scene in which he drives a pink taxi carrying three cross-dressing Geishas, first through a field of corpses and then through an interdimensional wormhole - anything goes. Accordingly, the costumes are all over the place. Yamamoto covered a wide range of garments and clothing styles. Lots of sharp tailoring, clown costumes, and even some tech-wear-esque moments via black hooded ponchos. What might appear like a strange mix, in this case, is very much intentional and quite conducive to the overall vibe of the movie. Finally, a special shout-out has to go to the overshirt worn by Kitano’s alter ego with an abstract acid green and pink floral pattern. Just phenomenal.
Thumbnail image: Dolls film still
Source: Letterboxd
