On Mindful Dressing
Yohji Yamamoto
Autumn/Winter 2022
I was first introduced to mindfulness around a decade ago. I was referred through the NHS (the publicly funded healthcare system here in the UK) to a mindfulness-based stress reduction program within the psychology department of a teaching hospital. The program was relatively new within the hospital at the time and was based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who originally founded the program in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts to help treat people with chronic illnesses.
It was a twelve-week course, with various follow ups, so chosen because the medical research shows twelve weeks is how long it takes to notice significant changes to grey matter within the brain. I will not bore you with my limited knowledge of neuroplasticity, so feel free to look it up if you are interested – there are several TED talks covering the scientific research into mindfulness and meditation, especially in relation to physical and mental health issues, which are all fascinating.
Mindfulness is now something of a buzzword, filtering through to boardrooms, school classrooms, military departments, and apps on your mobile phone (I myself use the Calm app daily). I was introduced through a medical context and have found it massively helpful in dealing with physical and mental health issues. At its core mindfulness is the total awareness of the present moment. At its height however it becomes a process of metacognition – to be aware of one’s own awareness.
Although it is written about and approached in scientific research and literature as a secular methodology, it is easily found in both formal and informal spiritual and religious practices. The obvious forefather to formalised mindfulness practice lies within the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. On a broader scale, mindfulness is inherent to mysticism and the union with the Divine, and so is also found in all three Abrahamic religions – devekut in Judaism, Christian meditation, and muraqabah in Islam.
The idea of self-awareness and self-witnessing leading to transcendence seems common to all cultures, whether we think of it as being in connection with the Divine or simply being “in the zone”. And yet it is not limited to ritualised formal practices, but rather something that one finds is encouraged to be cultivated for everyday life. Indeed, when I attended the first session in hospital all those years ago, I remember sitting down in my chair and being handed a single raisin – we were introduced to mindfulness through the act of mindful eating. Paying attention first to the look and feel of the raisin, then the smell, then the feel in the mouth, then the taste.
So, what on earth does all this have to do with fashion? Well, to me, dressing is a mindful practice. Anything can be a mindful practice if we truly pay attention to what we are doing and approach it with a sense of open curiosity and awareness. The sociologist Anthony Giddens’ argued that the self is a reflexive project, and I think dressing can most certainly form part of this self-reflexivity. Every morning we have an opportunity to face our self, our body, our identity, our emotions and our creativity anew. While we may have to follow dress codes, whether formally or informally codified, for me it is not even necessarily about the choice of garments, but the act of dressing itself.
To dress is to be mindful of the body exactly as it happens to be that day. To feel the pull of fabric against skin, to feel the pressure of a belt against the waist, it is what Umberto Eco once referred to as “epidermic self-awareness”. The great designers play in that liminal space between skin and fabric, with that dynamic zone providing opportunities to explore identity, creativity, emotion, and all manner of other interesting self-reflexive ideas. And yet I am always grounded back to the physical and the emotional and psychological connections which arise from that physical experience. When I dress, I am paying attention to my body as it is, not as I wish it to be. It anchors me into the present moment.
I was instantly intrigued seeing the latest Autumn/Winter 2022 collection from Ground Y by Yohji Yamamoto, offered with the tagline “to be clad in MINDFULNESS”. Ground Y is one of the many diffusion lines by Yohji, described as genderless and ageless, which seems a lofty ideal, but presents in perfectly wearable clothes with that Yohji DNA. Yohji is giving Rei a run for her money in terms of diffusion lines and collaborations these days, but unfortunately the business model is drastically different, being owned by venture capital firm Integral Corporation.
The collection was inspired by the practice of mindfulness and the act of changing clothes. It features designs by artist and calligrapher Souun Takeda, with those bold ink splatter prints and calligraphic text. The garments themselves are typically elegant Yohji fare, with long and loose silhouettes, and the prints adding a visual interest distinct from the more creative construction of the mainline pieces. I really like how approachable and easy these clothes look to wear, fitting in seamlessly with any Yohji wardrobe, and would work well with my own personal uniform.
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