Yohji Puts On His Boots.
Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme/Wesco
There’s something slightly ridiculous about a pristine white work boot.
Work boots are supposed to get kicked around. Mud, oil, rain, concrete, whatever the day throws at them. White leather suggests an entirely different existence. One involving considerably less manual labour.
Which is probably why Yohji Yamamoto putting WESCO’s JOBMASTER in white makes so much sense.
For the latest Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME collaboration, the Japanese designer has gone digging through the Oregon bootmaker’s working wardrobe and pulled out two of its heavyweights: the lace-up JOBMASTER and pull-on THE BOSS.
He hasn’t tried to make them polite.
They’re still big, stubborn boots. Thick soles. Serious leather. Hardware that looks like it has an actual job to do. The kind of footwear that enters the room a few seconds before the rest of you.
Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme/Wesco
But Yohji has messed with the language.
The headline is the white JOBMASTER, reportedly WESCO's first white leather version. Cow leather is paired with black horsehide, while white eyelets, laces, stitching and welting push the whole thing dangerously close to pristine. A lace-in-front zipper adds another layer of hardware to something that wasn’t exactly lacking presence to begin with.
Then there’s the slate version.
Same basic proposition, but almost everything disappears into a single muted tone. Upper, hardware, laces and zipper all sink into the grey. Less shocking than the white pair, perhaps, but arguably more Yohji. Severe, industrial and just strange enough.
THE BOSS goes the other way.
Black roughout leather sits across the vamp and counter while white cow leather climbs the shaft, finished with a nickel-plated roller buckle and a Vibram #100 outsole underneath.
It looks like something a very fashionable mechanic might wear if the mechanic charged by the minute and refused to tell you what was wrong with the car.
And then there’s the price.
The JOBMASTER lands at ¥614,900, while THE BOSS comes in at ¥522,500.
So no, these probably aren’t the boots you buy before pouring a concrete slab. But that’s also missing the point.
Yohji has spent decades making beauty out of things that aren’t conventionally beautiful. Volume. Black. Age. Imperfection. Clothes that hang strangely. Clothes that look lived in before you’ve lived in them.
WESCO comes from almost the opposite end of fashion. The company built its reputation around utility. Boots designed because somebody actually needed their feet protected while doing difficult work.
Put those two worlds together, and neither one needs to pretend to be the other.
The boots remain unmistakably WESCO. Yohji just gives them somewhere different to go. And the white JOBMASTER is the one that gets us.
It’s impractical. Excessive. Very expensive. It will probably look better the first time somebody completely fucks it up.
Maybe that’s the point.
The Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME x WESCO collection launches October 9 through Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME flagship stores and the official online store.
Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme/Wesco
Yohji Yamamoto takes on WESCO’s American work boots, puts one in pristine white leather and somehow makes a boot built for punishment feel completely at home on a runway.