Born in 1966 in Nagasaki, Takao Yamashita founded beauty:beast, a multi-disciplinary label blending fashion, illustration, and music. Initially trained in architecture, Yamashita turned to fashion in the late 1980s, debuting his collections in Osaka before showing in Paris and Tokyo.

Known for transforming materials into inventive, eclectic garments, beauty:beast fuses Steampunk, Gothic, and Victorian influences with streetwise youth culture. Yamashita approaches clothing as a form of communication—garments as “sentences” conveying emotion, identity, and culture. Across decades, beauty:beast has become a genre-defying platform for creativity, self-expression, and narrative-driven design.