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       Examining the 'Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion' exhibition enabled me to fully investigate works of contemporary Japanese designers. This helped me understand their theories and concepts later translated into my own work for my 'East Meets West' brief. For this project, I was to design garments that reflected both Japanese and British cultures.

The design process included research into both traditional and contemporary designers, learning how to combine both cultures and traditions, finally designing garments that potray contemporary ideas. For example, the minimal, decontsructed works of Yohji Yamamoto, a designer heavily featured in the exhibition. The Japanese perception of minimalism in the late 1980's/ early 90's was to strip tradtions down  to their bare bones, leaving only vital aspects. A shared goal of designers in the 1990's was to dissolve conventions in a decade of reinvention. Minimalism is a movement that I feel strongly about, and that I wanted to be evident in my own work. Studying examples from Yamamoto, Kawakubo and Miyake gave me an idea of how I wanted to aproach this.

My final designs were more influeneced by Rei Kawakubo of Comme Des Garcons, who deconstructed and reinvented typical western dress in a new way. For example, the white shirt design (scans to be uploaded later), I experimented with shapes and lenghths, inspired by Shinto preist dress.

Image- http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/S2007RTW-CMMEGRNS?event=show1524&designer=design_house98&trend=&iphoto=29

Minimalism and Fashion: Reduction in the post modern era. Elyssa Dimant. Collins Design, 2010.