Yohji Yamamoto took the spotlight this evening at the launch of his new Paris flagship, which glowed like a crème chantilly birthday cake, on a street he loves, rue Cambon. This is no ordinary street. It's been Mademoiselle's—as in Coco Chanel's—headquarters since day one and it's also the location of the infamous back entrance to the Ritz, the start of a certain late-night car chase that ended badly. For years Yamamoto has been fanatically attracted to this elegant, slightly haunted "rue Mademoiselle couture," as he calls it, waiting in typically long-suffering Japanese fashion to plant his white cube three-level flagship here. Did he know that next week marks the 125th anniversary of Gabrielle Chanel's birth? He must have. But suave and seductive as ever, he didn't breathe a word about it.
"My choice was the Right Bank, just steps from the Tuileries,” Yamamoto told me. “Rue Cambon is synonymous with Chanel and couture. This is my idea of luxury shopping. It starts with the neo-classic molding on the store's façade. That totally seduced me. Meeting the architect Sophie Hicks and discovering our joint obsession for the white cube has been the guiding light for this store. I like to think we found a classic Parisian salon and tucked a little something Japanese into it.”
As Yamamoto still owns and designs for his namesake company, the launch was something of a gathering of the clan, the last of Paris's style Mohicans. Azzedine Alaïa showed up in his usual role as the beard of Corso Como's Carla Sozzani, sister of Franca, the editor and goddess of Vogue Italia. Then there was Jean Touitou, who runs and designs for his brand A.P.C. with a music studio on the side and a new Paris pre-school called A.P.E. (Atelier de la Petit Enfance). Touitou was there because of Irene Silvagni, Yamamoto's longtime image director, now a consultant for him, as well as A.P.C. "She has a common-sense quality and she is Trotsky's great-grandniece, which means something to me," he explained. Touitou is set to open a shop on Paris's rue Royale next June. He will soon launch a set of essential oils which he admits "will be pricey," and he's doing a co-branded collection with Liberty of London. He's also doing a book with Lisa Eisner’s Greybull Press called "Roadrunner," about early skateboarders. And even though "no one reads anymore," he says, he's launching his choice of classic authors from the prestigious stable of Editions de Minuit.
By Rebecca Voight
