The "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition first showed at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2010 and traveled to the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2011. Highly acclaimed by art critics and fashion fans, the show is finally making a pit stop in Japan, at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art (MoT), starting at the end of this month.
"Future Beauty" is a comprehensive review of Japanese design, covering about 35 Japanese designers beginning with Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garcons and Issey Miyake in the 1980s to some of the more obscure young designers of today. What you can expect to see is a history that starts with the three aforementioned brands who began a revolution by refusing to conform to the then-popular European silhouette, and instead presented experimental and outrageous designs.
Fast-forward to today and the young brands chosen to be featured showcase a far more lighthearted, playful, and pop-like sentiment to their works, a reflection of how much fashion has changed. Mikio Sakabe, for example, gets his inspiration from the "cosplayers" (costume role-players) of Akihabara, while 10-year-old brand Mintdesigns is famous for their highly whimsical prints.