As the 230ft-long wall of ice that provided the backdrop for Y-3's show slowly melted, it was hard not to think about polar ice caps (the seeping cold helped, too). And by the time Yohji Y's boys lined up along that wall in silhouette at show's end while the wind at the end of the world howled on the soundtrack, you wanted to credit someone for their spectacularly dystopian sense of humor (how to add interest to a collection whose commercial meat is sneakers ? - push out the apocalypse boat !). A shame, in a way, that the clothes weren't Road Warrior redux. On the other hand, there was some cool stuff going on alongside the standard tech-fabric, sports-striped athletic wear that defines Y-3. And even those made a leap, as in a pair of multi-pocketed nylon pants or a sweeping nylon coat with a red lining. Yohji Y's an old romantic -he lined another huge coat with a print of roses, or wrapped his boys in plaid and unhemmed tweed. Think of them as vestiges of Old World style for when the New Ice Age comes -then they made sense amidst all the pieces quilted for subzero city life.
