Wear's it at?

(Photo of Blacknmate by Khanh-Linh La)

I'm not much into fashion per se -- I rushed in semi-disgust through several rooms of Viktor and Rolf at the Mori Museum last weekend to get to the Tsuyoshi Ozawa show -- but I do think the way people present and express themselves using clothes is important and inspiring.

Japanese teen street fashion, five or six years ago, was a huge inspiration to me. I bought Cutie magazine regularily and, somewhat absurdly for a man in his 30s, actually copied the haircuts, colour combinations and style clashes I saw going on in its pages. For instance, I remember being with Laila France in a photographer's studio in Berlin in 1997, leafing through Cutie (you could buy it back then at a shop on the Alte Schoenhauser Strasse), and getting the stylist to give me a copy of the 'mushroom' fringe a cute knock-kneed, pigeon-toed Japanese girl was sporting. She must have been 16; I was 37. Well, it's never too late to be starstruck. Back in 1997, Japanese girls and female British artists were the rock stars of my world, the style exemplars. How times have changed!

A quick flip through Cutie magazine today leaves me quite cold. Colour seems to have vanished from Japanese high streets. Black, grey and pink combinations are the order of the day, with lots of parallel black and white stripes, nasty pinky punky acid electric animal prints, bad 80s retro collegiate graphics, baggy outlines, trashy accessories. Think early Cindy Lauper in bangles and acid-washed denim. Yuk, yuk, yuk!

I do still want a style template, though. I want to see people dressing expressively. I want to be inspired to copy someone. Turning to comparative style observation mags like Street Magazine or Shift's Girls on the Street section, I have to admit that London and Paris are where street fashion is looking most interesting just now.



My personal style heroes at the moment are the musicians of the Shoboshobo movement. They have the best-sounding records, the best-looking sleeve designs, the best photoblogs and the best clothes of anyone I know. Here's Blacknmate about to take the stage, here's Medhi from Minifer wearing a Barbapapa T shirt (Barbapapa is where it's at, Daddy!), o.lamm about to bash someone over the head with a keyboard (nice belt, Olivier!), o.lamm on the way to rehearsal, and Noak Katoi at France Culture.

Actually, there are a couple of people in Berlin I consider the epitome of sartorial cool. Neither of them is German. Mario is one of them. He's Spanish. Nine is another. She's half French, half Japanese. Actually, when I look at what they're wearing it isn't that wonderful on its own. I don't know if I feel like copying Mario's baggy-ass jeans or Nine's Mudhoney T shirt. That's not where their soul is located, and it certainly wouldn't be where mine was if I just copied it.

No, just like o.lamm, these people have adverbial skills when it comes to clothes. It's all about how they're wearing what they're wearing. They have some kind of inner strength that shows through. What they're wearing betokens their talent, grace, and their concern with beauty. And, just as soul itself is the longing of the soul-less for redemption, so a deep concern with beauty becomes, by symbiosis, the thing it seeks.