JOURNAL
Can you tell me what being inspired feel like to you?
How long do you spend researching a collection?
And so, how do you begin?
This is a photo i took in my hotel room in Paris.
A cool floor that I was walking on.
Have the subjects that inspire you changed a lot through the years?
AY: No, not really. They vary from season to season, but always fall into the same camps. I don’t flip flop around, it’s more of an evolution. I’ll go back to inspiration from a prior season, and look at it differently. I don’t really re-invent. It’s more about refining for me. I am always searching for new stuff, but I am drawn to the same kinds of things.
What are some of the subjects or themes that you keep coming back to?
AY: The Twenties, 1997, and the Victorian period.
Miu Miu 1997
I also love imagery of cultures that mixed Victorian dress with their own fashion and style. The Herero Tribe of Namibia, Southern Africa is a beautiful example. They adopted the German missionaries' Victorian style floor length gowns and mixed the silhouette with their sense of vivid color and cow horn shaped headdresses.
AY: Rachel Feinstein, Rudolph Stingel, Kara Walker, Rachel Whiteread, John Currin, and Joe-Graham Felsen.
AY: Roni Horn, Sara Moon, Irving Penn, and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia.
AY: Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim
How about places?
AY: Zion National Park, I went there a couple of years ago with my kids