WHAT MAKES IT SO DISTINCTIVE
Shape, fabric, subcultures and the details that make a familiar piece feel completely different.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Five things: the shape of the clothes (Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto made shape the point in Paris in 1981), the fabric, an obsessive level of craft, a lot of distinct style scenes, and secondhand shops in Koenji and Shimokitazawa that each have their own very specific taste.
THE DETAILS BEHIND THE LOOK
When two famous Japanese designers, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, presented their work in Paris in 1981, they challenged the idea that clothes should follow the shape of your body. Clothes could have a shape of their own: loose, uneven or deliberately oversized. Kawakubo later experimented with padding that changed the outline of the body itself. The shape the clothes made mattered as much as the clothes.
Fabric can be just as important as the cut. Take the clothing line Pleats Please, by Japanese designer Issey Miyake. The clothes are sewn together first, then given rows of folds called pleats. Those folds open and close as you move, creating their distinctive texture and shape. I actually linked this collection at the bottom of the page, and it’s definitely worth a look, super interesting.
Even familiar everyday clothes get an obsessive level of attention. Take jeans. In Kojima, a district in Japan known for denim, specialists work on everything from dyeing the yarn to weaving the fabric and sewing in the finishing touches. Those skills come from years of making textiles, uniforms and workwear. If you change the yarn, dye or finishing process, you can actually change how your jeans feel and fade down the line. Two pairs that look similar when you buy them can look completely different after a year or two. The craftsmen here change those things on purpose, and they’ve been doing it for decades.
Community is a major influence on fashion, and Japan has plenty of distinct scenes. I’m talking Lolita, decora, gyaru, visual kei, fairy kei, mori girl, and so many more. They’re incredibly different, with their own communities, histories and ways of putting an outfit together. People share references, develop a style together and keep changing it over time. There isn’t one Japanese look, and that’s the fun of it.
Tokyo’s secondhand shops often have their own very specific taste. One might focus on older American clothing, another on vintage designer pieces, another on a particular decade or reworked garments. In Tokyo neighborhoods known for secondhand shopping like Koenji and Shimokitazawa, you can walk from one shop into another and find a completely different selection. People can spend years developing their own style, then build an entire shop around it. Rather than just filling a shop with old clothes, they choose pieces around a broader theme, giving each place its own feel. That’s one of the reasons why thrifting in this country is so special.
ONE BUSINESS. A CLOSER LOOK.
This 23-minute documentary from sabukaru goes inside Casanova Vintage, Tokyo’s Bougiest Store. It follows the people behind the store for a day, celebrity clients included, and how they welcome customers. An incredibly interesting closer look at one of Tokyo’s coolest vintage businesses.
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