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.

Titled “6.1 The Men” and shown in conjunction with Rei Kawakubo’s presentation for Comme Des Garcons Homme Plus, the fall 1991 collection has endured as one of Yohji’s most fabled outputs. It was viscerally influenced by the Gulf War, which was being fought concurrently, and furthermore focused on the eroticism which has time and time again tacitly charged bloody conflicts between nations. He was fascinated by the pin-up visuals which have been synonymous with war since the second World War, and have often served as motivation for soldiers who lacked little else to cling onto. This jacket is made with the supple horse leather which was used repeatedly throughout the collection and is dyed a vibrant red.

Condition: 8.5/10. Small scuffs on left sleeve near the hem.

Tagged size: M

Shoulder: 22in

Pit to pit: 25.5in

Length: 25in

Sleeve: 24.5in