YOHJI YAMAMOTO AND HIS COLLECTIONS

Yohji Yamamoto is fed up with casual. He wants men to dress up, not down. "I think current fashion is too American. It's T-shirts and shorts all the time. I think we need some proper elegance to enhance the atmosphere a bit." With that in mind, the designer sent out a collection of eccentric exaggerations—one might call them arty caricatures—of menswear's gloriously dressy past, specifically the eighteenth century.

The result looked like Mozart and his friends on acid. Elongated jackets were given random bits of cross-stitch sampling, and rich English florals, echoing great-great grandma's upholstery, showed up in loose suits. Yamamoto morphed shirts and vests into curvy hourglass tunics in a patchwork of knits and wovens. Midway through the show, the models began to resemble Eustace Tilley,The New Yorker's dandy mascot, in cutaway jackets. Then he switched to more abstract tailoring all in slate blue, lavender, or orange, complete with matching stiff shirts, shoes, and socks.

By the end of the show, Yamamoto had come up with pilgrim peaked hats and powdered wigs, asymmetrical collars—one side pointing upward, the other down—and George Washington curly 'dos, one male hairstyle that's not ready for a comeback.