Barbican to exhibit 30 Years of Japanese Fashion

The Barbican Art Gallery is to host Future Beauty:

30 Years of Japanese Fashion, the first exhibition in Europe to comprehensively survey avant-garde Japanese fashion, from the early 1980s to the present.

Curated by the eminent Japanese fashion historian Akiko Fukai, Director of the Kyoto Costume Institute, the exhibition explores the unique sensibility of Japanese design, and its sense of beauty embodied in clothing.

Japanese fashion made an enormous impact on the world fashion scene in the late 20th century and designers such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto redefined the very basis of fashion. Their works will be shown alongside Kawakubo’s protégé, the techno-couturier Junya Watanabe, together with the acclaimed Jun Takahashi, and the new generation of radical designers including Tao Kurihara, Fumito Ganryu, Matohu, Akira Naka and Mintdesigns.

The exhibition runs from October 2010 to February 2011.