"It was like my butterfly wings were torn off. Mori built her brand into a business empire, which in its heyday occupied a whole building in Tokyo designed by the architect Kenzo Tange - later torn down and replaced with another structure at typical Japanese speed.#photo5įrom the loss of the building to the retirement of her fashion house from haute couture, "not everything was positive", she reflected in her Yomiuri column.
"The young Japanese designers who live in Paris are passionately avant-garde," she told the Washington Post. She saw a distinction between herself and her Japanese peers who later made a global name for themselves - such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons fame. Mori moved her brand from Tokyo to Paris in the late 1970s and was quickly embraced by fashion insiders. Her designs combined traditional patterns like cranes and cherry blossoms - and her trademark butterflies - with Western styles, from woollen suits to sharp satin tailoring.#photo4 In 1965, Mori unveiled her first collection abroad, in New York, under the theme "East Meets West". I suddenly realised that I should change my approach and make my dresses help a woman stand out," she said, according to the Washington Post. "The whole Japanese concept of beauty is based on concealment. When she stepped into Chanel's studio the iconic designer suggested she wear something in bright orange to contrast with her black hair.#photo3 It turned out to be an inspirational encounter. "This was a kind of turning point for me," she once said of the trips in the early 1960s, during which she met Coco Chanel in Paris. She opened her first atelier above a noodle shop in Tokyo, and came to specialise in dressing the stars of the silver screen.Īs Japan's postwar economy grew, so did her business, which she ran with her husband - a textile executive who encouraged her to visit Paris and New York when the arrival of television made the film industry less profitable. Encounter with Chanelīorn in 1926 in a rural corner of western Japan, Mori studied literature at Tokyo Women's Christian University before turning her hand to design.#photo2 "Fashion is something that pushes you, gives you courage to spread your wings and allows you to have adventures," she said.
In January, the designer summed up her feelings toward the industry in a special column for Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun daily. "When humans work with their hands, their creativity expands," Mori told AFP during a 2006 retrospective in Tokyo, where a robot modelled a replica of her classic "Chrysanthemum Pyjamas" - a kimono-like robe made from hot-pink chiffon and silk.#photo1 The exclusive French club sets exacting standards for their hand-crafted, and extremely expensive, garments. The designer's trailblazing career took her from Tokyo, where she started out making costumes for cinema, to New York and Paris - and in 1977 her label became the first Asian fashion house to join the rarefied ranks of haute couture. The writer of a 1990 Vogue article on Japanese fashion quoted Mori, “the high priestess of Japanese conservative fashion,” as saying that “the whole Japanese concept of beauty is based on refined hiding, or concealment, of things.” While always maintaining a sense of propriety, Mori had a larger and more generous mission, one that opened doors for many others.Over the decades Mori's luxurious creations were worn by Nancy Reagan, Grace Kelly and countless members of high society.īut she was also a pioneer for Japanese women, one of a tiny number to head an international corporation.Īn employee at Mori's office said Thursday that she died at home "of old age" on August 11, and that a private funeral had taken place. But if there was a sense of correctness in her work, there was also hidden strength. She liked to say she was her husband’s employee, for example. Nonetheless, she remained a product of her time: She was conservative in dress and in certain ways of being. Mori’s arc, as Robert Trumbell noted in The New York Times, is a post-war Japanese success story. It was her gift to create beautifully made clothes that had the allure of the “other” for both Western and Eastern women alike. “I cannot force ladies to wear kimono, but I can create the atmosphere of the kimono,” she said in 1983. Besides using Japanese motifs, she worked with silk, and used kimono fabrics in her work even as the kimono was less worn. Photographed by Gianni Penati, Vogue, October 1, 1969 Model wearing a red and black chiffon toga by Hanae Mori.
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