Magpie foppery / tatty fashion fix
Jan. 27th, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHere's yer new magpie foppery / tatty fashion fix, landlubbers, with a glimpse of the March edition of FRUiTS (dude's "I adapted a jacket" britches rock), a glance back at Kyoichi Tsuzuki's "Happy Victims" series in Ryuko Tsushin (this girl's a stylist), and a room picture from Tokyo Graffiti magazine, one of the best street style mags (lots of tiny photos). This genre of "snappy dresser / collector types photographed at home in their rooms" is one I like very much, because you really can enter into the private worlds of people with an advanced, idiosyncratic sense of style.
FRUiTS' Shoichi Aoki has relaunched the magazine in a smaller format (it only costs 540 yen per month, which is a very reasonable £2.60). Oh, and I highly recommend this video of Kyoichi Tsuzuki explaining his Happy Victims photos. The personable Tsuzuki (who broke through with his "Tokyo Style" book in 1993) says that he prefers his otaku fashion victims to art collectors because "they're out of balance... it's not an investment, they would never sell their clothes". He describes the boy with no bathroom who nevertheless collects Hermes goods, the Buddhist monk with a yen for Comme des Garcons. It's not art, it's reportage, he says (Tsuzuki spent ten years writing reviews for Popeye and Brutus, and still likes to call himself a journalist), but the fashion companies hate it; magpies living in shabby rooms don't convey the image they want to project at all.
FRUiTS' Shoichi Aoki has relaunched the magazine in a smaller format (it only costs 540 yen per month, which is a very reasonable £2.60). Oh, and I highly recommend this video of Kyoichi Tsuzuki explaining his Happy Victims photos. The personable Tsuzuki (who broke through with his "Tokyo Style" book in 1993) says that he prefers his otaku fashion victims to art collectors because "they're out of balance... it's not an investment, they would never sell their clothes". He describes the boy with no bathroom who nevertheless collects Hermes goods, the Buddhist monk with a yen for Comme des Garcons. It's not art, it's reportage, he says (Tsuzuki spent ten years writing reviews for Popeye and Brutus, and still likes to call himself a journalist), but the fashion companies hate it; magpies living in shabby rooms don't convey the image they want to project at all.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-26 05:57 pm (UTC)Not up on their history, those fashion folks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-26 07:04 pm (UTC)Though "Lira"(a mag for 'worldmusic') made me interested a while ago.
Fruits, good enought to eat... (an understatement)
Date: 2006-01-26 08:33 pm (UTC)I love it when fashion is a form of rebelion. Those stockings are a riot.
Don't forget the value of this magazine as some of the best soft-core porn.
Off Topic, sorry
Date: 2006-01-26 10:30 pm (UTC)This is may be old news, well covered. But (sic) did you get your stage name from 'the castle'?
Re: Off Topic, sorry
Date: 2006-01-26 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-27 01:30 am (UTC)Balance is overated.
?
Date: 2006-01-27 02:08 am (UTC)Re: ?
Date: 2006-01-27 02:53 am (UTC)An old glam rock fan speaks out...
Date: 2006-01-27 02:55 am (UTC)I'm the kind of person who's always found rock stars vastly more compelling than politicians. Correction: selected rock stars. Forget school, forget college, my biggest teachers have been people like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. But since the 70s there's been a weird collapse, a weird inversion; Bono is at Davos with the politicians, raising money for Africa. More power to him, it's a worthy cause (he's getting big corporations to donate money by making a new brand called Red). But he looks awful and I don't care much for his music. You know, these (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQtO_ugcC3E) are the kind of people I grew up with, and anything less inspiring is a let-down.
So if the old rock stars are politicians now (and they make better politicians than the politicians), who are the new rock stars, the people who dazzle me the way those 70s Glam Rockers did, with sheer charisma and creativity? My answer is: people I see on the street here in Japan. They make my heart skip a beat, they infuse me with a delirious sense of aspiration, possibility, love, positivity.
I like it very much when journalists consider these people important enough to do reportage on. Luckily, here in Japan they are indulged. Correctly, I believe.
Re: An old glam rock fan speaks out...
Date: 2006-01-27 03:29 am (UTC)Sure, we need to eat first and foremost, but, as Kyoichi Tsuzuki points out, for some of these "happy victims" making a splash comes right after that basic necessity.
Re: An old glam rock fan speaks out...
Date: 2006-01-27 09:43 pm (UTC)Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 05:11 am (UTC)What countries aren't conservative now? The plague is really spreading.
All my life I dream of a life free of politics; "Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in." -- Why do I have to feel guilty for saying this? -- Politics, like religion, must be abandoned.
Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 06:02 am (UTC)Meanwhile...
Date: 2006-01-27 07:15 pm (UTC)I'll accept a fine of $20 and no sense.
Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 07:04 am (UTC)Venezuela
Date: 2006-01-27 07:10 pm (UTC)One good thing about many communists, and the politicians in Venezuela, is that they understand that you can do things without money, as long as there are resources. Capitalist rules create too many fictional barriers.
Speaking subjectively, the Japanese capitalist communism is --or was-- the best form of government I lived under.
Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 06:56 pm (UTC)Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 07:55 pm (UTC)Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 08:14 pm (UTC)Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 08:20 pm (UTC)Re: Conservatives taking over Canada?
Date: 2006-01-27 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-27 07:03 am (UTC)I would guess this depends on the brand. For the international luxury companies with valid non-Japanese markets, middle-class and lower middle-class kids buying over their heads and wallets can lead to a decrease in brand equity. In the 90s, Gucci pulled out their ads from a Japanese publishing company when one of its magazines did an "unauthorized" piece about teenage girls (mostly from the working classes, I bet) wearing Gucci on the streets of Shibuya.
What's interesting though is the flip side: the fact that mass Japanese youth consumption has been primarily responsible for keeping foreign fashion companies like APC and Agnes B in business.
This will change, no doubt, in the new Japanese socioeconomic environment, seeing that selling mass to a large middle class market is no longer more profitable than selling to a select rich audience. No reason to tolerate these pests buying your goods when they can finally be ignored once and for all.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-27 09:54 am (UTC)I accept your basic premise on this issue, which, vastly simplified, seems to be:
1. Luxury goods at some point (the 80s?) connote distinction / exclusivity.
2. Luxury goods later (90s?) connote dissemination / inclusivity.
3. Luxury goods once more connote distinction / exclusivity as recession hits mass market but not the rich.
Where I disagree is that this is a one-off (or "termial") scenario. For me, this is the archetypal way the fashion industry works. Brands are launched upmarket, then downmarket spin-offs (jeans, perfume) cash in on cachet. Then it's necessary to re-consolidate at the top end of the market, or launch new brands which play on distinction.
And this is where I have to admit that my entry today talks about two very different phenomena:
1. The FRUiTS phenomenon is a grassroots one. Kids really are being their own stylists and putting together their own looks.
2. The people Kyoichi Tsuzuki photographed in "Happy Victims" are brand snobs (albeit very poor ones, making big sacrifices to "dress above their station") buying into the top-down fashion system, based on elite designers, added value, distinction and snobbery. Even Tsuzuki admits that they are "victims of the international fashion system".
My sympathies obviously lie with the first group.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-27 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-27 08:52 pm (UTC)