Limi Feu (Q5027)
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Limi Feu is a fashion house from FMD.
Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
---|---|---|---|
English | Limi Feu |
Limi Feu is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2000
creative director
In the black-and-white mood piece that Limi Feu created in lieu of a show this season, her models, filmed in a grungy loft space somewhere in Tokyo, are alter egos of the designer herself. Same furious, lean, fast-motion energy. Today, in her showroom, Limi was doing the modeling, and clothes that were shapelessly huge or hard to grasp on the hanger leapt into angular life. The dungarees with the tiny bib front, for instance, or the tailored jacket with big, kimonolike inserts at the shoulders. Limi's own favorite was a waistcoat that had been pared to what amounted to lapel peaks that pointed upward like two big arrows. A dévoré-ed, silken caftan had also been dissected and put back together with big rings that suggested a bondage harness. No, not anotherFifty Shades…reference, but Limihasbeen studying bondage traditions at home in Japan, a country that definitely knows how to tie a knot.Maybe that has something to do with "the Japanese mood" Limi talked about capturing. As far as fashion goes, she has always been a tough, tattooed, bike-booted Stooges fan (there's still disbelief in her voice when she talks about her father, Yohji Yamamoto, not having a clue who Iggy is), but there was another quality in her new collection, a kind of bruised fierceness that suggested defensiveness—or protection—on one hand, and strength—or projection—on the other. The disaster 18 months ago still reverberates in Japan, not least for the younger generation of fashion designers battered by a shaky economy. There was something else in Limi's clothes, though—something that the artful dodginess of the lookbook missed. That was the sturdiness of worn clothes treasured, treated in a way to give them new value. And that said "survival."
25 September 2012
"I have a feminine heart," Limi Feu said fiercely, as she pounded her chest. Then she dissolved into hoots of laughter. She is, after all, a designer whose collections have often been based on a gender-neutral, teddy-girl proposition. So her latest show, with the Marilyn Monroe-ish fluffiness of its hair and makeup, felt like a step forward—or at least, to some other place."The fifties, romantic, feminine," she said. OK, if you say so, Limi. The opening looks had a convent-girl severity, with a touch of blush pink to add inconvenient sensuality, but then that bulky-cocoon Edwardian thing that blights Japanese design insinuated itself into the silhouette. It was a blessed relief when Limi dropped in some fiercely corseted looks to restrict her voluminous white poet shirts. Better yet when an army green subtext snuck in. It is exactly that kind of unpredictable left-field touch that gives her collections the kick to carry you through the inevitable asymmetric, funereal longueurs. And if the only feminine heart that army green brings to mind is Private Benjamin's, then Limi may be on the right track after all.
28 February 2012
The world ofBlade Runneris not quite upon us yet, but to tide us over we've got Tokyo's tribalism. All those kids strolling around Harajuku dressed as creatures from their fantasies—it's a perfect fashion paradigm. Limi Feu designer Limi Yamamoto has brought a refined version of Tokyo's reinventive impulse to Paris before, but never more so than with today's show. Inspired by the Irish performer Imelda May, Yamamoto filtered a quiff-cum-ponytailed, red-lipped, tattooed rockabilly babe through her own avant-garde fashion heritage. The result was something a lot more rockin' than you'd usually find in the often cerebral-to-a-fault Japanese design sorority.For a start, Limi Feu's invitations featured star-shaped pasties. Once more with feeling—star-shaped pasties! Whatever they promised never quite materialized on the catwalk, but there was a flashiness that felt new for Limi. The striped tailcoat over a stretch dress over capris, the white dotted net dress layered over a froth of black tulle, the dévoré beaded top over black pants: Any of them would look mighty fine on rockabilly royalty. And Yamamoto went a step further with a black-and-white group that suggested nothing less than the cocktail party her rockabilly princess' parents might throw while their girl was out on the tiles. A dress was elegantly dissected down its front, a skirt slit up its back with equal grace. Meanwhile, the designer herself was wearing a T-shirt that declared her allegiance to the Misfits Fiend Club. Her boss wasn't happy, said Yamamoto, because it wasn't one of her own shirts. Rebel to the end, you might assume, except she also paraded a banner inviting the world's "genius doctors" to help guarantee Japan's kids a future. In the light of the disaster that still threatens her country, that seems like the least a responsible citizen should do.
27 September 2011
The symbiosis between mens- and womenswear is the oldest fashion story ever told, but it's been coming on sledgehammer-strong for Fall. Limi Feu's show was proof that the Japanese have an instinctive head start on the trend. The designer literally expanded on classic elements of men's dressing: stretching a white shirt to the floor; elongating a ribbed gray cardigan to mid-calf; sweeping the floor with a kilt. Limi turned the back of a cadet jacket into an exercise in draping. This neat little reversal happened a few times. A topcoat turned into a cape, a peacoat became a massively hooded parka. Maybe it was the gender integration that inspired an oversize double-breasted jacket with sleeves cut from a blurry floral print. More twisted: a floral nightshirt under a gray flannel biker jacket whose sleeves had been slashed open to reveal the same flowers inside.Androgyny—which sounds a little crisper than "non-gender-specificity"—is an ongoing game in Japanese fashion, so it was diverting to focus on the less ambiguous (through Western eyes, at least) aspects of Limi's collection. The dresses, for instance. A polka-dot dress in various permutations had a dust bowl chic-ness. The finale pieces were made unexpectedly revealing by fabric that was slashed open at the side. The character in these clothes was hard to define. That much was audible in a soundtrack that veered from bagpipes to the Stones' "Street Fighting Man." Put them together and they imply Celtic toughness. As trite as the notion of the urban warrior may now be, Limi Feu could have been dressing a new breed.
1 March 2011
Black and white, those diametrically opposed shades, are the binary basis of Japan's fashion avant-garde. A close second: man and woman. Put those things together and what leaps into view—at least as far as Limi Feu is concerned—is the increasingly unhallowed institution of marriage. In the name of unhappy brides and grooms the world over, the designer posited today's collection as a reevaluation of that union, to the tune of Billie Holiday's sweet moan. A hint of her real feelings might have been discerned from the peculiar undertow of violence—at least, that's what the droog-y eyelashes, the bowler hats, and the Doc Martens, with theirA Clockwork Orangeechoes, seemed to be suggesting. Backstage, though, Limi was circumspect, her counsel simply to ditch the ceremony and get married just the way we are, without all the traditional folderol.It was probably telling that the white pieces, the most "bridal," were cut from savagely distressed cotton, although the patched holes and trailing threads created a kind of romantic effect that is probably as frilly as Limi will ever let herself get. But it was to basic black that she remained most irrevocably devoted. Hers is a very quiet evolution, and today's show retained the broad strokes of seasons past in its draped asymmetry and full cropped pants. There was also, however, a dramatic volume in an infanta-style dress that could constitute this designer's idea of eveningwear, as well as a kind of classical body-consciousness in dresses that were drawn to the torso with elastication. And let's not forget the slenderizing sheath for a pregnant model, which might have been Limi's way of saying that with or without marriage, there's always life to look forward to.
28 September 2010
Marianne Faithfull singing with Metallica made the perfect soundtrack for Limi Feu's new collection. The world-weary woman bruised by love, the metal merchants pumping out their dark sounds…that said it all, really. In a sea of black, there were two white poet shirts, like moonbeams at midnight. They were the most obvious manifestations of Limi's new appetite for romance. There were plenty of others. A leather waistcoat flared into a little peplum. Layers of trailing black scarf points were Stevie Nicks in a graveyard. A sheer black skirt was trimmed in lace and wrapped in a big crocheted scarf (a black leather biker jacket anchored the look). The same crochet was also a full skirt under a highwayman's coat, though the floppy hat made the model look a little like the Creeper's girlfriend. One imagines Limi finding the gothic cross-reference quite to her taste. It certainly defined the serious hard-rock spirit of her clothes, much less polka-dot playful than in the past. But she is still adept at striking a balance between the weird and the wonderful, as in the elongated cardigan with the deep, scooped neck, or the fringed cardigan coat.
2 March 2010
Limi Yamamoto's invitation was one of the season's most charming—and most enigmatic. Amid the numbered but mostly blank pages of a small book, a few questions were posed. The designer insisted it was all a joke, but one—"C'est un peu de Yohji Yamamoto?"—seemed especially relevant.There wasn't a little of Limi's father, there was alot, in a collection that was more respectful of her heritage than anything she has designed to date. At the same time, it felt like she was making a statement about Japanese fashion in general. As one of the prominent figures in Japan's next wave, Limi has said she is keen to keep traditional techniques and suppliers afloat while defining her own identity. In the past, she has injected an idiosyncratic, almost frilly take on femininity into the more predictable androgynous, asymmetric vocabulary her father and his peers have made their own. Not so much this time round. Androgyny was the core of the collection. Emblematic menswear details—collars, lapels, pockets—were exaggerated, sometimes to spectacular effect: The sleeves of a crisp white shirt were as wide as a kimono's but still had buttoning cuffs.The androgynous point was reinforced by a handful of male models—all shapes and ages—wearing the womenswear. Asymmetry was emphasized in skirts that were gathered at one ankle. A chambray with indigo dots felt like the kind of artisanal fabric the grand masters of Japanese fashion would be drawn to. They'd also surely approve of the swelling volumes of the dresses that closed the show. Like the rest of this not entirely typical Limi collection, those looks left an odd but not unappealing sensation—almost as if the designer were selflessly saying, "Let's win this one for my dad, for my country."
29 September 2009
Edwardian England shaped modern Japan's notions of menswear, so the waistcoat has always been a building block for designers like Issey, Yohji, and Rei. You can add Limi to the list. The designer worked it every which way in her new collection, making for one of the male/female interplays that has become as much her signature as that of her father, Yamamoto père.In Limi's hands, the vest came full and double-breasted over sailor pants tucked into kneesocks. It was shrunken to nothing over a bright white shirt, or shown with little cap sleeves, or elongated into asymmetrical points (over a white cotton shirtdress), or even combined in a waistcoat/jacket hybrid. The reworking of one idea through the course of a show is something of a Japanese design tic, but Limi had fun with it, turning her chosen item into a fur gilet tied at the back, a big cross-belted knit, and a cardigan scarf.A spirit of play has always made this designer's work stand out from the rest of the Tokyo tribe. And this season, even though there was an elegant maturity to a bouclé coat or a funnel-collared tweed suit shot through with Lurex, that was balanced by flapper dresses of fringed knit (worn with fluoro stockings) and tiered, coin-dotted tulles. Those said Limi's not getting all grown-up and serious on us just yet.
10 March 2009
Limi's showroom was apparently filled with color and her runway backdrop was her favorite shade of pink, but at the last minute, she'd decided to focus her show on black and white, the signature combination of Japan's fashion avant-garde. That's her heritage, after all, and it was no big surprise that she went on to deliver the oversize proportions, asymmetry, and masculine/feminine interplay that you expect in the work of her dad, Yohji. But if the editing of color suggested some shrinkage of the sense of wicked fun that separates Limi from her forebears, that wasn't how things turned out. For one thing, this was a show whose soundtrack married poignant piano and shrieking Stooges.Maybe that was the music the models were listening to on their Princess Leia headphones. One outfit was composed of shades of lilac; another, with a swingy red peasant skirt, suggested what might have been. Otherwise, Limi pushed the monochrome oversize to extremes with a long white shirt and an equally long skinny tie, or a jacket that was elongated to the knees, or suspendered clown-sized pants. But she also showed a little black dress with a portrait neckline, and a black suit (three-quarter sleeve jacket, pencil skirt) that was a girlier version of the twisted-but-dressy stuff her father excels at. A tiered dress in what looked like concertina-pleated midnight blue organza was positively glamorous. Then Limi hung the same idea off skinhead-thin suspenders. Just the kind of thing that works with a modern girl's tattoos.
3 October 2008
Limi Yamamoto, a.k.a. Limi Feu, is in a unique position. There is no obvious parallel for a designer's offspring following quite so closely in daddy's bootsteps. But if Limi's designs reflect papa Yohji's, they also exemplify a new Japanese attitude.The generational shift was most obvious in the way that Limi proudly showed her clothes on a posse of characterful Tokyo women, rather than on a parade of interchangeable Eastern European blond tweens. Then there's also the fact that, as a post-post-WWII baby, Limi is imprinted with a very different set of associations than those ground into the DNA of the Japanese main guard. Asymmetry, androgyny, and Edwardiana—all territory blazed by Yohji, et al.—were there, for sure, but she gave them a little girlish froth. Hence, a black knit micro dress, or a white Aran knit paired with matching mohair boots.Limi was her father's daughter in the monochrome palette and the severe black tailored pieces. (Are Japanese children raised by fierce nannies?) But she also had fun with the proportions of bubble skirts and princess coats. Perhaps this strict-playful dichotomy is a byproduct of life in a (post-)imperial island nation, because Vivienne Westwood has been prone to something similar at odd points in her career. On the other hand, it was Ry Cooder's "Paris,Texas" that came over the sound system…so maybe what was sweeping through an apron skirt and a dress with a trompe l'oeil messenger bag thrown across it was more of a frontier spirit.
29 February 2008
"She made it," declared a beaming Yohji Yamamoto after his daughter Limi's Paris debut. And papa had every reason to be proud: The collection was a walking advertisement for fashion DNA. You could tell Limi is daddy's girl by the use of volume, layering, asymmetry, and the monochromatic navy-and-white palette. (Even those squashy top hats had the tang of vintage Yohji.) But this particular chip off the old block has her own row to hoe.Feumeans fire, and there's a lot of fight in Limi. From the models' bouffant shag hairdos to the strappy boots, she worked the rock attitude expressed in her own tattoos.That was the crucial departure from Yohji's work: If he can only imagine such a girl, Limiisthat girl. And it gave, for example, her cropped navy bomber over a long asymmetrical white jersey top a punky zest. But this wasn't plain old tattooed toughness, either. Limi chopped the shoulders out of jackets and the thighs out of trousers, offering artful glimpses of skin but also amplifying a kind of airiness you don't often associate with the family oeuvre. She laid sheer fabric over a full white skirt here, deconstructed a gold knit tunic over a flared skirt there. These volumes may hark back to her father's fascination with Edwardiana, but the idea looked quite seductive in a puff-sleeved trenchcoat-dress. And she scored with her models, too: Predominantly Japanese, they were a welcome respite from this season's never-ending march of the robot blondes.
5 October 2007