24/11/2025
Patrick. I met Miss Mami at Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1986, during the Master’s Degree Course. Our year split naturally into two groups: one chasing fashion dreams, the other more international, striking, and boldly self-assured. We had all been noticed before, our work recognized, our faces occasionally in the press.
Miss Mami and I belonged to that fabulous, almost otherworldly group of people, and we became lifelong friends. Entering such an elevated world was exhilarating and soul-crushing at once; the legendary teachers were almost brutal. The smell of turpentine and chalk dust hung in the studios, mixing with the faint aroma of espresso from the corner café. The soft rustle of fabrics on the cutting table, the quiet clink of pins, the muted hum of sewing machines—all of it surrounded us as we worked. I appeared as a long-haired, dreamy bishonen—skinny, usually dressed in black. Inside, though, I was paralyzed by shyness, often mistaken for petulance. I daren’t speak.
Then, one day in a lecture, she asked me something entirely unexpected: “What music do you like?” Art or fashion might have seemed more natural, but music? I spoke of my upbringing in the ’70s and ’80s, classical notes filling my early world, while faint strains of a distant indie record floated from a nearby studio.
Miss Mami was the first Japanese person I had ever met. The intrigue she and her friends carried—the texture of their fabrics, the subtle scent of their perfumes, their playful mischief—pulled me in like a moth to a flame. We have been inseparable ever since. Together, YAB-YUM emerged: our creative collaboration, our indie clothing label.
This season, we chose to pare everything down, embracing a more personal and intimate approach. It feels deliberately out of step with the trend-driven Tokyo scene—a clean break, a fire trench between us and the predictable.