Yohji Yamamoto

For Yohji Yamamoto’s 2025 Pendleton collaboration, Kubo reworked ideas from 2007 archive pieces through flannel substitution, joined-jacket construction, khaki calibration and a double-brand label. He also carried the project into wholesale planning, joining archive interpretation, product development and commercial preparation.

In April 2023 Kubo, then in charge of Yohji Yamamoto’s creative department, returned to Bunka’s Global Fashion Concentration. He discussed cultural appropriation and the use of ethnic dress in collection development, then reviewed student portfolios.

During the 2022 academic year, Bunka Women’s University listed Kubo as Yohji Yamamoto Inc. 専務 for a special design lecture on creativity through the house. The appearance placed his creative work within a senior corporate rank by this point.

WILDSIDE launched online on 20 July 2022 as a hybrid of original unisex product, collaborations, ecommerce and editorial work. A multi-brand Osaka complex followed in October, extending the project into physical retail without creating a separate store brand.

Kubo represented Yohji Yamamoto in the White’s Boots collaboration and contributed directly to design development. A functional boot zip informed Spring/Summer 2018 garments, and a line in his Photoshop proposal became a hand-stitched detail on the boot.

Irène Silvagni’s house creative-director tenure ended in 2018 after approximately twenty-six years. No like-for-like successor to her image, casting and cultural remit was identified in the supplied record.

By 2018 Kubo oversaw creative across Yohji Yamamoto Inc.’s brands, giving him a company-wide remit across the brand portfolio. He remained in charge of the creative division in late 2025.

Ground Y re-debuted at GINZA SIX on 20 April 2017 as a continuing fashion brand after its earlier Shibuya PARCO concept-shop phase. Its public authorship is company-led, with no named individual creative director established.

From 2015 Kubo returned annually to Bunka’s Global Fashion Concentration for lectures, portfolio reviews and student mentoring connected to the Yohji Yamamoto studio. A 2023 session addressed cultural appropriation and the use of ethnic dress as a collection reference.

Ground Y opened at Shibuya PARCO in September 2014 as a concept shop combining selected house products with more accessible clothing, denim, shirting and graphics. The retail experiment was interrupted by the building’s reconstruction and preceded the label’s continuing fashion-brand phase from 2017.

discord Yohji Yamamoto was presented in New York in February 2014 and entered Japanese retail in May with bags, shoes and scarves made in Japan. It developed into a continuing luxury-accessories brand with its own seasonal archive.

Kubo participated directly in the concept development behind Yohji Yamamoto’s Selfridges Board Room skull skateboard and related Autumn/Winter 2014 imagery. The idea grew through recurring conversations with Yamamoto about ageing, reputation and the persistence of the designer’s public image.

By April 2014 Kubo was working at a senior planning and design level within Yohji Yamamoto. Dazed described him as Yamamoto’s right-hand collaborator and head of planning and design during discussion of the house’s skull imagery and Selfridges skateboard project.

S’YTE launched in 2011 as an atelier-designed label sold exclusively through THE SHOP YOHJI YAMAMOTO. It developed a genderless, digital-first clothing system before entering permanent physical retail in 2022 and opening its first dedicated store in 2025.

The Victoria and Albert Museum staged Yohji Yamamoto from 12 March to 10 July 2011, thirty years after the Paris debut. Ligaya Salazar’s curatorial framework joined garments to Masao Nihei’s spatial work, Peter Saville and Yes Studio’s graphics, a Nick Knight poster and distributed displays across the museum.

During preparation for Yohji Yamamoto womenswear Spring/Summer 2011, Kubo joined Yamamoto in briefing models on how to walk the show. His presence beside Yamamoto at the final presentation stage reflects a senior studio role by this point.

The operating company filed for civil rehabilitation on 9 October 2009; court approval on 25 November enabled a transfer of the business to an Integral-backed company on 1 December. Mainline collection activity and the public design roles of Yohji and Limi Yamamoto continued, while the released documents did not disclose every transferred asset, contract or archive right.

Kubo appeared among three Yohji Yamamoto personnel credited on Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls, for which Yohji Yamamoto held the costume credit. The project places Kubo inside the house’s film-costume work while his individual duties remained part of the wider Yohji Yamamoto team.

Y’s bis LIMI adopted the LIMI feu name in 2002 while retaining Limi Yamamoto’s separate design authorship. The current identity is securely anchored by the brand’s later twentieth-anniversary archive, beginning with Autumn/Winter 2002–03.

Yamamoto took part in a one-off encounter during Tanztheater Wuppertal’s twenty-fifth-anniversary festival on 23 October 1998. The event joined clothing and dance without creating a continuing repertory costume appointment.

Yamamoto designed costumes for the world-premiere opera Susanoo in Kanagawa, opening on 3 November 1994. The project placed his approach to volume and movement within a production governed by music, staging and performance.

Yamamoto designed costumes for the Bayreuth Festival production of Tristan und Isolde, which opened on 25 July 1993. The commission extended his work into opera while remaining separate from the seasonal collection system.

Irène Silvagni joined Yohji Yamamoto as creative director after leaving Vogue Paris. Her long tenure shaped image, casting, shows and cultural positioning while the clothes remained authored by Yamamoto and the atelier.

Wim Wenders’s Centre Pompidou-commissioned film Notebook on Cities and Clothes made Yamamoto’s Tokyo–Paris working process and reflections on clothing, cities and image technology a central subject. Wenders authored the film; Yamamoto participated as designer, subject and interlocutor.

Kubo joined Yohji Yamamoto Inc. in 1987 after Kinki University and Bunka Fashion College. The appointment began a continuous career inside the company that later expanded into senior creative oversight.

Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme began with an Autumn/Winter 1984–85 presentation in the company showroom on rue Saint-Martin in Paris. It established the eponymous menswear line as a separate system from Y’s for men.

A formal seasonal image and catalogue programme developed around Marc Ascoli’s art direction and independently authored photography and graphics. The system gave the house a durable communications structure without transferring collection design away from Yamamoto and the atelier.

Yohji Yamamoto established his eponymous womenswear line in 1981 as a collection system separate from Y’s. Its first Paris runway was Autumn/Winter 1981–82 at the Intercontinental Hotel on 4 April 1981; Pour Homme followed in 1984.