Y-3
REVIEW
COMPLETE COLLECTION
PARIS, March 9, 2003
By
It's a label that was built from the ground up, literally. Yohji Yamamoto's Y-3 line started with those perpetually sold-out, incredibly cool sneakers. Now in its second season as a fully head-to-toe collection, Yamamoto's collaboration with Adidas (the Y is for Yohji, the 3 for the triple stripe that trims the athletic brand’s classic shoes and tracksuits) is proving something that Venus and Serena Williams have been trying to tell us for years: tweaked properly, sports clothes can be fashion.This season's collection was full of track pants that were tailored like trousers (miniature pleats and all) and black leather-and-wool baseball jackets, cut just slightly too large to be considered standard issue. The white-on-black Adidas stripes were twisted around pant legs and morphed into gold military-officer-style Vs on the sleeves of great toggle coats and slim black hoodies. Cargo pants, which we thought we'd seen the end of after the Spring collections, looked entirely fresh—cut full from silky parachute fabric and cinched at the ankle to form a soft balloon shape.
And yes, there were brand-new trainers to lust after, this time in mirror-bright silver and glittery ruby-slipper red. Yamamoto said he was inspired by the young people who show up to work at his atelier every day in sporty street-chic clothes. No wonder, then, that the collection artfully summed up that hip-hop-meets-skater-boy-meets-old-school-prep aesthetic that fashion-obsessed under-30 types can't seem to get enough of right now.
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