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'I want to make things that have never been made before'
For his graduation collection in 2005, Yoshikazu Yamagata made 10 big dolls from textiles. There were real people inside these clumsily realised rag dolls. Yamagata (b. 1980) based his work on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Emperor's New Clothes. Each person - each doll, in this case - has a personal story to tell and distinctive clothing. With his freak show, this Japanese artist/designer humorously oversteps the boundaries of fashion, and by a long way: ‘I like to hide my message in an amusing way.'
A year before graduating from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, Yamagata won two prizes during ITS#3, the influential Italian fashion competition, with eight fairy-tale outfits.
Yamagata followed internships with John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. He returned to Japan in autumn 2005, where he has been making illustrations and creating items of clothing such as a gigantic bra that pops up in a variety of situations. Sometimes this white colossus can be found hanging in a tree, at other times it appears on the banister in a stairwell - food for the imagination.