Veteran Yamamoto turns 'baby designer' once more

Twisting hooded dresses from a single length of jersey, or draping woollen cape-coats on bare shoulders, Yohji Yamamoto broke a few rules with the autumn-winter collection he showcased in Paris on Friday.

"I've been making clothes for a very long time," the 68-year-old Japanese designer explained after the Fashion Week show in the courtyard of a Paris high school. I wanted to come back to being a baby designer."

"I have been called 'Mr Cut' -- so this time I wanted to not cut at all," he smiled.

Poppy red or black dresses were wrapped from a single length of fabric, fine slashes cut for the arms and neck, some with hoods and scarves extending out of the same weave.

Also all of one piece, ornately draped dark coats were balanced on the shoulders or wound and looped around the body, over fine silk dresses, while long round-hemmed navy capes had wide lapels flipped up at the back.

Worn over black lace boots, or flat dancer pumps, there were also more structured pieces like a safari jacket and wide pants with layers of asymmetric drapes and folds, or a series of voluminous angular-pleated skirts.

As the music morphed from Spanish guitar to 1920s jazz at the show's end, half a dozen models returned to lean against the red poles of the set, their capes folded back to reveal the fine-strapped tops of their dresses beneath.

Japanese fashion design, Yamamoto said, "is governed by very strict philosophical intellectual rules. I got bored with the rules".

The designer said he found a new kind of "body conscious", sexy aesthetic working on the collection -- although he stressed, "beautiful girls will be beautiful wearing a rag -- fashion designers just help".