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: 2006-01-27 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.