To level accolades upon Yohji Yamamoto 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.

The back of this heavy-weight leather jacket features art from Justin Davis, an American jeweler. With sensibilities formed in the heart of Los Angeles’ ‘70s/‘80s rock scene, a sleazy melting pot of outcasts and up-and-comers immortalized in hair metal anthems like “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Welcome to the Jungle,” his work borrows heavily from both gothic and biker culture, and has made him popular with a litany of rockstars and actors. This graphic is a bold reinterpretation of WWII American Naval Tattoo-style insignia (fittingly also channeled by the biker gangs of Davis's era), updated for America's modern war conflicts. Yamamoto has never been shy about tackling the politically-charged arena of international wars, having used pin-up girls in fall 1991 as a nod towards the Gulf War conflict which was concurrently transpiring. This jacket employs a highly unique distressing technique, which creates natural inconsistencies throughout the brown body.

Condition: 8/10. Natural signs of wear throughout.

Tagged size: 2

Shoulder: 18.75in

Pit to pit: 20.75in

Length: 22.75in

Sleeve: 24.5in