As discussed in Chapters 10 to 13, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto positioned themselves in marginal categories such as “anti-couture,” “non-Western,” and “female.” From these positions, they challenged the dominant designers in Paris, who occupied central positions such as “couture,” “Western,” and “male,” through radical strategies of subversion. In particular, they opposed the body-conscious aesthetics of Dior and the then influential Claude Montana by presenting loose silhouettes, asymmetry, and designs mainly in black.

This shock was widely reported in the British newspaper The Guardian, which described it as something like “excitement mixed with fear” spreading across the West. Journalists even warned of the “end of Paris fashion.” Their clothes challenged the very foundations of how fashion had been understood, and they encouraged a reconsideration of the relationship between body and clothing, as well as gender.

However, despite such a radical challenge, the Paris fashion system itself did not collapse, and the dominant position of French couture houses remained strong. By the mid-1980s, the loose and monochrome style of Japanese designers began to lose momentum. Instead, body-fitting designs by Azzedine Alaïa and decorative styles by Jean-Paul Gaultier gained attention again. As a result, the “end of Paris” did not happen, and Paris has remained the center of global fashion up to the present. Kawakubo and Yamamoto themselves have continued to present collections in Paris every year since their debut.

This phenomenon can be understood through the theory of the “field” proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. According to Bourdieu, newcomers in a field challenge the dominant group, but this challenge takes place within shared “rules of the game.” Therefore, it does not lead to a true revolution that destroys the field itself. Although dominant actors (orthodox) and challengers (heterodox) are in conflict, they both share a tacit agreement that the field is worth competing in. This shared belief, or doxa, allows the structure of the field to be continuously reproduced.

It is also important to note that the stability of this field is not maintained only by the power relations among designers. Mediators such as fashion journalists, editors, and critics play a crucial role. Through newspapers and magazines, they construct narratives and evaluations, framing Japanese designers’ works as “shocking” or “different.” In doing so, they reinterpret these challenges within the system and incorporate them back into it.

From this perspective, the practices of Kawakubo and Yamamoto brought a temporary disturbance to the Paris fashion world, but they did not overturn its deep structure. Rather, their challenge introduced new styles and values, which helped to renew the existing system and contributed to its continuation. Therefore, the “success” of Japanese designers in Paris should not be seen as a simple success story, but should be reconsidered within the complex relationship between institutions and the avant-garde.

The next question, then, is how these challenges have been described and evaluated. In other words, we need to examine how media and criticism have constructed the narratives of “success” and “shock” surrounding Japanese designers.