To level accolades upon Yohji is like, as Leonard Cohen once said about Bob Dylan, “pinning a metal on Mount Everest”. He claims himself to not be an artist, he says fashion has never been an art, yet to deny the artistic quality of his work would be to deny what our eyes can plainly observe. Like an impressionist painter, he exhumes the depth of relatively simple garments (dirty clothes, the Japanese press branded his early work), taking a form and rendering its function secondary to the emotion he choses to evoke. He refuses to do all the work for you, where a passerby sees a wrinkled coat and oversized, strangely buttoned shirt, a man willing to consider the rorschach presented to him may see anything from romanticism to suffering. This foundational concession — that there is no answer to what precisely you’re looking at — has rendered Yohji a favorite of artists and thinkers across the world.

This heavy-weight knit turtleneck features the silhouette of a toy mechanical robot, which captured the imagination of many a child in the ‘60s, ‘70s,and ‘80s. It appeared on the ‘87 runway, and is constructed with dropped shoulders and elastic cuffs on the sleeves and hem.

Condition: 8/10. Two small holes on upper right shoulder. Comes with original retailer tag from 1987.

Tagged size: M

Shoulder: 21in

Pit to pit: 22.5in

Length: 31in

Sleeve: 25in