Yohji Yamamoto crossed my mind for the first time in some time at the elegant dorm of the Grand Ferdinand hotel in Vienna.
There were four of us in neighbouring beds encased in glossy teak, with starched white sheets, and a room lit by a starry Lobmeyr chandelier. Breakfast was 32 euros. A bed for the night was £28. We decamped each morning to the nearby McCafe, where my paltry McMuseli paled beside their hearty breakfast meal. My fellow travellers were as silent and unsocial here as back at the dorm. These three room mates were young. In their twenties. Japanese. Two men and one woman. What they had in common apart from their nationality was a particular wardrobe. Not the Westwood kit evident on the young Japanese scurrying through the high end shops on the Herrengasse, nor the heritage brands on Japanese elders, their raised iPhones capturing everything and nothing: McDonalds golden arches, the Ferris wheel from The Third Man, Goethe immortalise…