People who wear Yohji Yamamoto to worship the Fifth Master

In Beijing in June, the weather is so hot that people feel like melted ice cream outside the house, but in Wutai Mountain, Shanxi, more than 300 kilometers away, you can still feel a touch of coolness, and even a little chilly in the early morning. Tony from Guangzhou wrapped himself tightly in the quilt. He did not expect that after escaping the humidity and heat of southern Guangdong and experiencing the scorching sun of Beijing, he would end up freezing in Mount Wutai.

"Come with me to worship at Mount Wutai. I heard that Wuye Temple is very efficacious. My Mandarin is so bad, so don't be fooled by others when you arrive alone." Tony asked me on WeChat half a month ago. He said that he had not been very lucky recently. After being advised by a numerologist in Hong Kong, he wanted to go to Mount Wutai to worship Manjushri Bodhisattva. He also specifically pointed out that he must go to the Wuye Temple.

Although the phenomenon of sky-high prices for incense has been controlled to some extent after the rectification of Wutai Mountain Scenic Area, Wuye Temple, which has always been popular, is still full of people. At five o'clock in the morning, believers who came to worship lined up in a large queue, and many of them were devout men and women holding incense like rocket launchers: "Master, Amitabha, do you have a WeChat account? I will forward it to you so that we can make a good match. I want to set up a stage for the Fifth Master..." Legend has it that the Fifth Master is the incarnation of Manjushri Bodhisattva. The request is answered, which makes this place more popular than other temples in Mount Wutai. There is also a legend that the Fifth Lord is the Dragon King and once entrusted a dream to Emperor Kangxi, which led to the establishment of the Wuye Temple. The Fifth Lord punishes evil and promotes good deeds, but also likes to listen to operas. Therefore, since ancient times, the way to fulfill the wishes of the Fifth Lord is to set up a stage and invite a theater troupe to sing in operas.

"In Guangdong and Chaoshan, there is also the habit of singing operas, but that one is for immortals and spirits. Some people say it is for Qingfeng, which is a ghost! There are people singing operas on the stage, but no one in the audience..." Tony told me mysteriously. "Come in, come in (come in)." I replied to him in broken Cantonese, and Tony's smile proved that I spoke poorly.

The Wuye Temple is not big, but unfortunately there are too many believers. Tony and I were soon divided by the crowd. Under the solemn but dim Buddhist lamp, the mortal men and women, who can rival the crowds at the Spring Festival railway station, bowed three times and kowtowed, muttering about the wishes they had made to the Fifth Master. It seems that even if Fifth Master is in heaven, he has to be open 24 hours a day, all year round to be able to cope with this battle.

"Ah Biao, Ah Biao." Although I emphasized many times that I will no longer call "A Biao.""o;Bill" is an English name, but Tony still can't remember it. "Abiao" is what the Cantonese people call Bill.

“There was a master there who said that I was very close to Buddhism and showed me his refuge certificate. I gave him 1,000 yuan. "Tony told me excitedly.

I suspect that this master may have confused the difference between Taoism and Buddhism, because Tony's appearance and dress are indeed a bit Taoist and fairy-like: he has long hair tied into a mane, a full white beard, and a slim figure of 1.8 meters. Ying Taoist - the most important thing is that he wears Yohji Yamamoto: a pair of loose thin wool trousers, which the designer said "you can't win a fight if you don't wear them"; a pure white long shirt, which looks simple but is made of high quality, has occupied his fans and boutique buyers' stores 10 Carla Sozzani, the founder of Corso Como, has most of the styles in her wardrobe - I laughed at Tony for being a "copycat" who would wear Yohji Yamamoto even when he woke up early in the morning to burn incense and pray to Buddha, but he didn't take it seriously: "How about I be like you, buy nothing, wear it, and leave it to be turned into an antique store?" ”

Tony, 39, said that he has been in love with Yohji Yamamoto since he was in his 20s: "I didn't know what fashion was at that time. My mother brought a few Japanese magazines with her on a business trip. There were photos of Yohji Yamamoto's 1998 spring and summer men's wear on them. I liked it very much at the time. "From then on, Tony became crazy about this Japanese brand. "I bought my first Yohji Yamamoto in Hong Kong more than ten years ago. At that time, I was working as an assistant in an interior design company, and my first month's salary was 9,000 Hong Kong dollars. I went to Joyce and bought a Yohji top, which cost more than 4,000 yuan. I ate doll noodles for half a month. I cooked it at home and put an egg in it. Later, I also bought a booklet designed by MM Paris on eBay. "To this day, Tony still buys one or two pieces of Yohji Yamamoto clothes every season: "In the spring and summer of 2016, I bought a long black shirt, a three-button jacket, and two pairs of socks, all bought on Farfetch. The store is still expensive. I have to pay for two buildings, drive a car, and pay for it at home... All my other clothes now are from COS and Uniqlo. ”

"Then if you still buy it, it will cost a lot of money no matter how cheap it is online. "I asked.

"I like it. From the beginning, I felt that wearing Yohji wasA choice for people like us. ”

"What kind of people? ”

“That’s right, the people who were doing design and creativity in our era! I am young and always want to be different, but I don’t want to be too weird. Yohji’s temperament is more matching, and the brand is relatively niche..." German director Wim Wenders once described his feeling of wearing the clothes designed by Yohji Yamamoto in the documentary "Urban Fashion Shorthand" shot in 1989: "I bought a shirt and a coat. Usually when I put on new clothes, I feel as excited as a new layer of skin. But now wearing the new clothes he designed, I feel like I’m wearing an old man’s clothes” - Tony may have had the same feeling as Wim Wenders at the time, but because he was young and eager to gain recognition and status, he chose Yohji Yamamoto.

“But now I won’t tell others that I like Yohji Yamamoto. ”

"Why? ”

"After you have passed the age, if you look at WeChat Moments, they are all Yohji Yamamoto. It seems that Yohji Yamamoto is a god. Some of the words in the articles, I don't think he said them. ”

As he approaches his age, Tony has seen most of the heaven and earth, people and things in his life. It is time to prepare to meet himself. Yohji Yamamoto has gradually changed into the clothes he is used to wearing.

The God of Social Media

It is impossible to verify when Yohji Yamamoto became a god-like being on domestic social media, but various quotations under the banner of Yohji Yamamoto swept WeChat Moments almost immediately, and the audience was astonishingly wide, ranging from students in universities and secondary schools, fashion and creative practitioners, and even laymen who had no knowledge of fashion. Tongchi: "I often see my daughter's posts about this man in Moments. I clicked on them to see which philosopher I thought he was. He said in it that girls in Tokyo in the 1990s became escort girls for a designer bag, and that young people don't like to think anymore... Later I checked online and found out that he was a fashion designer, Japanese. " said Professor Wu, who teaches at Nankai University in Tianjin.

"Then what do you think of what he said? ”

“I asked our former female colleague who studied art, do you know about a designer named Yohji Yamamoto? She said yes and gave me two books, one called “Making Clothes” and one called “I Drop a Bomb.” Later I flipped through it and found that I couldn’t understand the things you did in fashion, but some of the words in them were quite philosophical. ”

"What about? ”

“Encourage people to think, don’t just follow the crowd! ”

"Then do you think it will be useful to your daughter after reading it? ”

"It's useless. I always say to my daughter, don't watch those Korean TV series every day. You can't tell anything about it and just laugh and laugh. I said you should go and have a relationship and come back. You are in your 20s and 70s. When you come back from get off work, you just play on your mobile phone and watch movies.During the TV series, the most common thing she said to me was, Dad, do you think my selfie looks beautiful..."

Shortly afterwards, I saw Professor Wu’s WeChat post about Yohji Yamamoto being forwarded to his circle of friends.

Namo Yamamoto Yohji

"Yohji Yamamoto is here, at the Lexus event. "In April this year, the car brand Lexus unveiled an advertisement for the cooperation between its GS series sedans and Yohji Yamamoto in China, and invited Yohji Yamamoto himself to attend; in front of the lineup, Business of Fashion’s video interview with him also caused a phenomenon in the circle of friends; just last week, a WeChat content titled "Society is impetuous and too many young girls look like prostitutes" quickly swept domestic social media. Before that, Yamamoto-style quotations like "I hate women who don't pay for their own clothes" and "I just want to achieve nothing" have almost become viral marketing examples. There are endless labels like "Spiritual Teacher" - basically, in China, anything related to Yohji Yamamoto can become a hit, but the designer's clothes probably don't account for a large proportion: "Yoji Yamamoto's sales are not particularly good here, just average. There are more young customers coming to try on clothes. Some customers also responded that why such simple clothes are so expensive, or the upper body effect is not good, sometimes his clothes are quite attractive." "said the sales manager of a domestic buyer's store.

After asking more than 20 people who often or occasionally forward such quotes on Moments and Weibo, or who are interested in them, we came to the conclusion that regardless of whether they know Yamamoto Yohji and his works or not, most of them say that today is the end of the law. The words of this man who once emphasized that he is just a clothes maker represent their voices and opinions.

"Yoji Yamamoto is now almost the same as Yu Dan back then. With so much information, so much confusion, and so much chicken soup, there must be a spiritual leader. His words, or the exaggerated quotations of others, serve this role. "Li Ran, who once worked as a reporter for a news organization in Shanghai, said that she is currently studying the impact of popular culture on society in different eras in China.

"Be yourself" is a cliché, but just like we can never see our own appearance without a mirror, "self" often needs to be reflected in the reflection of "others" to appear. "It's ridiculous. What Yohji laments the most is that people need to think and resist. It's boring if everyone is the same. The Chinese also value learning and not thinking, but it seems that no one is willing to think. Most of them want to stand on the shoulders of great people and do things. The architects I work for now always say that they want to go to New York and London to see the works of the masters, but no one wants to think about the little things happening around them. But buildings are not good unless they are huge and majestic..." Tony sighed. What are your thoughts on fashion? It is so shallow that materialistic men and women who are crazy about it will think that putting on a new set of clothes is equivalent toIt has gained new life and defined itself; it is so profound that almost everyone cannot resist its shallowness.

"Look, you asked God to ask for divination when you were in trouble, and you even wore Yohji Yamamoto to burn incense." I wanted to give him a hard time.

"Well done, Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva saves suffering."

Indeed, Buddhism teaches that everyone is a Buddha. If you cultivate causes in this life, you will see the results in the next life. However, if you are lost in this life, the worldly people should recite "Namo Guanyin Bodhisattva" in their hearts and ask the Bodhisattva to save us from the sea of suffering - even though the Buddha also said that if you put down your butcher knife and become a Buddha immediately, it is better to seek outside than to seek for yourself.

But for those who lament the chaos in today’s world, long for relief but don’t know how to ask for it, and are keen to repost Yohji Yamamoto’s quotes, the Dharma name has changed:

Namo Yamamoto Yohji.