Japanese Rock Star Yoshiki Flows Seamlessly Into Fashion: ‘Music and Fashion Are Almost Inseparable’

variety.com:

Jeff Benjamin As with his long music career, Yoshiki’s eventual foray into fashion seemed inevitable.“I’m the oldest son, and, usually, the son takes over the family business,” Yoshiki, Variety’s International Achievement in Music honoree, says about the expectations for him to take over his parents’ kimono shop. “I was always surrounded by those flashy kimonos.

I knew every single process because my father had a kind of factory behind the store.”He continues: “I became a musician, but fashion’s always been around — music and fashion are almost inseparable.”The multihyphenate is playing in the major leagues with his Maison Yoshiki Paris brand, which recently launched at Milan’s Fashion Week.

Yoshiki says he is overwhelmed by the “great response” to the line and his show.The fashion connection was always there. In the early 1980s, with X Japan, Yoshiki and his bandmates pioneered international interest in what would soon be known as Japan’s Visual Kei fashion and music movement.

The cover of the band’s 1989 sophomore album, “Blue Blood,” featured the phrase “Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock,” words that embodied Yoshiki and his peers’ androgynous makeup, clothes and brightly dyed hairstyles.“I was a rebel; I rebelled against everything,” he says of the time. “I came from a classical music background, but at the same time, I loved punk rock … I wanted to dress like David Bowie-ish.