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.

Flowers stand as one of Yohji’s most important design motifs - from the entire SS1996 “Flowers and Boyhood” collection to the all-over floral print suits and shirts of SS2001, the use of flowers speaks to Yohji’s more playful side as a designer, a trait that emerges in his work more often than one might think. Dating back to 1990, this sweater stands as one of his earliest examples of such. It features four different colored pockets with an accompanying fake three-dimensional flower in each one.

Condition: 9/10. No significant flaws.

Tagged size: M

Shoulder: 21in

Pit to pit: 23.5in

Length: 26in

Sleeve: 25in