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Nobody else knows how to do anything
Land of the rising fun is a travel article in The Guardian this morning in which writer Ben Anderson raves about his first visit to Tokyo. He's impressed by the city's chic fashion stores, luxurious hotels and delicious restaurants. But, more than that, he likes its relative equality, and its sheer good nature:
"Most of Tokyo looks like the posh part of any other city. I didn't see an area that looked like it needed a good clean, let alone a slum, which is some achievement for one of the most populated cities on the planet... I experienced so much goodwill in Japan I'm sure it was genuine. Porters refused tips and a taxi driver turned the meter off when roadworks slowed us down."
To a London resident, these are indeed shocking things to discover. And, being British, Ben doesn't take long to turn his enthusiasm about Tokyo into reproaches against his motherland: "I came to see Tokyo in the same way as I saw the b Akasaka: a huge playground of such bright ideas and fantastic design that I barely noticed how cramped it could be. I was too busy being amazed and thinking "why haven't we got these? Why haven't we thought of this?!"
"The trip made such an impression on me," Ben concludes, "that I've developed a prejudice in favour of anything that comes from Japan. I've even had the urge to go up to Japanese people on the streets of London and say, "I know, I've been there. No one else knows how to do anything."
I must say that this was exactly my feeling after my first couple of trips to Tokyo. I could no longer stand London's brown buildings and grey sky, its hostile, arrogant, competitive, snottily class-obsessed citizens.
It's interesting, though, to wonder whether approval of one country has to be disapproval of another. And which other? It seemed natural for me to compare Tokyo to London, since I've spent more time in London than any other city (13 years, in total). If not London, the obvious comparison for me is New York. I rarely compare Tokyo with Paris, though. And actually, I'm not quite sure I could bring a clear winner out of the comparison. It's apples and oranges. One doesn't stand as a living reproach to the other; they both do what they do.
What about people? Do we implicitly deride "ordinary" people when we approve of, for instance, the eccentrics featured in street fashion magazines like Street, FRUiTS and Tune? (Photos here show some of the latest pages in all three of these magazines.)
I think there is an element of that going on, even if it's only a self-reproach directed against our own lack of daring. If these magazines are utopian, representing a world of peer-endorsed individuality ("I don't know what it means to you," the snapped snappy dressers seem to say, "but the other stall-holders at Camden Market seem to understand where I'm coming from"), they're also satirical. They mock the dull, if only by unspoken extension. But which dull? Certainly not the homeless, because several bums and down-and-outs feature in these shots. And not the old, either, because there are some oldies here too (I'm one!). People who buy clothes at The Gap? Office workers? The readers of more authoritarian, blingy, top-down, mainstream fashion mags?
Like Ben Anderson, I'm inclined, flipping through Street, to ask "Why don't we have this?" Why do I have to look at a Japanese magazine to see how the most interesting-looking people in London are dressing? Then, of course, I remember that Shoichi Aoki's template for these three magazines is a British one: Terry Jones's original idea for i-D magazine, based on the punk grassroots, DIY ethic, another London invention.
And I suppose that's why we choose certain cities, and not others, to be specifically reproached by the cities we love. It's as if we're saying: "Look, London, you claim to have invented this, so how come Tokyo does it better now? You're looking bad by your own standards."
"Most of Tokyo looks like the posh part of any other city. I didn't see an area that looked like it needed a good clean, let alone a slum, which is some achievement for one of the most populated cities on the planet... I experienced so much goodwill in Japan I'm sure it was genuine. Porters refused tips and a taxi driver turned the meter off when roadworks slowed us down."
To a London resident, these are indeed shocking things to discover. And, being British, Ben doesn't take long to turn his enthusiasm about Tokyo into reproaches against his motherland: "I came to see Tokyo in the same way as I saw the b Akasaka: a huge playground of such bright ideas and fantastic design that I barely noticed how cramped it could be. I was too busy being amazed and thinking "why haven't we got these? Why haven't we thought of this?!"
"The trip made such an impression on me," Ben concludes, "that I've developed a prejudice in favour of anything that comes from Japan. I've even had the urge to go up to Japanese people on the streets of London and say, "I know, I've been there. No one else knows how to do anything."
I must say that this was exactly my feeling after my first couple of trips to Tokyo. I could no longer stand London's brown buildings and grey sky, its hostile, arrogant, competitive, snottily class-obsessed citizens.
It's interesting, though, to wonder whether approval of one country has to be disapproval of another. And which other? It seemed natural for me to compare Tokyo to London, since I've spent more time in London than any other city (13 years, in total). If not London, the obvious comparison for me is New York. I rarely compare Tokyo with Paris, though. And actually, I'm not quite sure I could bring a clear winner out of the comparison. It's apples and oranges. One doesn't stand as a living reproach to the other; they both do what they do.
What about people? Do we implicitly deride "ordinary" people when we approve of, for instance, the eccentrics featured in street fashion magazines like Street, FRUiTS and Tune? (Photos here show some of the latest pages in all three of these magazines.)
I think there is an element of that going on, even if it's only a self-reproach directed against our own lack of daring. If these magazines are utopian, representing a world of peer-endorsed individuality ("I don't know what it means to you," the snapped snappy dressers seem to say, "but the other stall-holders at Camden Market seem to understand where I'm coming from"), they're also satirical. They mock the dull, if only by unspoken extension. But which dull? Certainly not the homeless, because several bums and down-and-outs feature in these shots. And not the old, either, because there are some oldies here too (I'm one!). People who buy clothes at The Gap? Office workers? The readers of more authoritarian, blingy, top-down, mainstream fashion mags?
Like Ben Anderson, I'm inclined, flipping through Street, to ask "Why don't we have this?" Why do I have to look at a Japanese magazine to see how the most interesting-looking people in London are dressing? Then, of course, I remember that Shoichi Aoki's template for these three magazines is a British one: Terry Jones's original idea for i-D magazine, based on the punk grassroots, DIY ethic, another London invention.
And I suppose that's why we choose certain cities, and not others, to be specifically reproached by the cities we love. It's as if we're saying: "Look, London, you claim to have invented this, so how come Tokyo does it better now? You're looking bad by your own standards."
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There are individuals there - kids on the street making unusual choices and combinations with thrift store finds and carefully selected items from H&M etc.
I think that the particular characteristic of the blog is that, despite the presence of 'ordinary' people one is never far away from an idea of aspiration. Everything looks up towards the look (and labels) of "power brokers and insiders from the top-down Western fashion industry."
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"I remember scruitinising the audience and seeing some fantastically cool looking people: boys dressed in beautifully cut, second-hand suits that dated, by appearance, from the 1920s; their hair very short and slicked back with pomade; one wearing brass framed spectacles. Young women like characters from one of Colette's reminiscences of Paris in the 1910s: black sheath dresses, veils, cigarette holders, dark blue celluloid glasses...
To my ravenous awe, as one who had made the epic journey from the outer suburbs, and had little idea of how he would return thence, should the show run late, these creatures of the night were the last word in glamour; the inhabitants, it seemed, of a self-created aristocracy ('Thems', to use a Peter York term from 1976 denoting street aesthetes), their image describing nostalgia for archaic visions of modernity."
I remember these people, aped them (or at least was inspired by some of them) and had forgotten about it all for a while. Wonder what happened to them all. They weren't at all retro, they were similar to some of the people who turned up later at Bowery's Taboo - willing to quote from all eras to produce a very personal take on the present. I like self-created aristocrats - a status conferred through aesthetic choices rather than lineage - far better than aristocrats.
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The closest thing is probably Tibor Kalman's brilliant book Unfashion (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=17-0810945002-0).
tramp
(Anonymous) 2006-09-23 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)at the soup kitchen this week - too busy washing up from
a place setting for 300. I hope these folk were compensated
at the going rate for number of column inches they're filling.
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As for their style - think it owed more to Biba than Brideshead. Even if they were trying to look like fake-aristos -rather than wierd personal takes on citizens of Weimar Germany, Bowie-in-Berlin, 20s jazzers, and 30s Hollywood stars, which is how I remember them - then I think there is a difference between trying to look like someone from Brideshead long before it was screened and trying to look like it after!
To be fair to The Sartorialist he runs regular features on 'old man style', workwear etc and though most of the comments about him are pretty fair there is more to him than just a fashion name check.
photos of homeless people
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneth/
I haven't quoted like this since I was at school.
"It's interesting, though, to wonder whether approval of one country has to be disapproval of another."
because without it, saying this,
"I could no longer stand London's brown buildings and grey sky, its hostile, arrogant, competitive, snottily class-obsessed citizens."
made you very much part of the problem.
Although I am not 100% sure that the unfriendlyness of cities is completely caused by the attitudes of the well travelled.
;)
Re: I haven't quoted like this since I was at school.
My first Japan trips were well-funded concert tours, so I was able to take 4 of my London friends along in the guise of musicians, tour managers etc. When we got back, the friends who hadn't gone found us unbearable to be with: they called us "the Japan Club". Whether you were or weren't in "the Japan Club" was definitely a class divide.
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The lasting impression was that of beige buildings and many, many business men in identical black suits. It seemed even more money-driven than London. It was certainly not a city sustained by its fringe element - indeed, its fringe element appeared only to be the bored children of business men, dressing up for fun on the weekend before disappearing back into school uniform like every other teen who ever lived.
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Sure, everything you say there is also true, but you only need to drift once through the milky night from a cafe to a love hotel to a ramen bar, with an ancient moon floating over the futuristic illuminations, feeling completely safe as you mingle with a friendly and joyful crowd of beautiful, pale-faced ghosts... to know the magic energy that pervades those ugly beige concrete boxes.
For me, at least, the drugs do work. I'm on Prospero's Island the moment I hear the chimes at Shinjuku station.
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-23 01:27 pm (UTC)(link)-henryperri
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-23 02:31 pm (UTC)(link)henryperri
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-23 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)However, it doesn't make the transition of day to night... And you have pseudo gladiators walking around everywhere. Kind of lame.
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...said The World to the U.S.
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And Nylon had just released their Street (http://www.amazon.com/Street-Nylon-Book-Global-Style/dp/0789315017/sr=8-1/qid=1159027046/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2333300-7939935?ie=UTF8&s=books) book. I'm going out to buy my copy today. Even though Nylon's issues have seriously declined when it comes to content for the past two years. However, I think a lot of Americans are becoming more aware of street fashion, I mean, there's Cobra Snake and Misshapes which is becoming extremely popular (Cory Kennedy-- the female face of The Cobra Snake has her own livejournal fan communities. One for just worshipping her (http://community.livejournal.com/corykennedyy/) and one for trying to find out where she buys all her clothes or how to best mimic her style (http://community.livejournal.com/coryklothes/)).
I don't think the American street fashion is as exciting as what you might see in Europe or Japan... And it's not as "real" either, most people here just are trying to copy someone else. I think in Japan especially they just throw on whatever they like and it works well most of the time. Here it's much more calculated, I think. "What will best make me look like this person or that person?"
The Nylon Street book, for instance, I think the cover of it looks a lot like a not-as-well executed copy of a FRUiTS back-issue, this (http://tomoyo.lenin.ru/Fruits8/Picture5.jpg) FRUiTS cover. But I'm a bit paranoid and favor Japan as well, so...
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If we do then we're being just as elitist as the cash-fashion tag-hags who find esteem through labels.
Photos here show some of the latest pages in all three of these magazines.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but many of the styles included in these magazines seem to me to be a little dull and mundane.
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This is more like it, right? It just screams FRUiT! -- Sorry (Fraudian blip): FRUiTS!
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Also, the heart on the bowler has to go.
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Less colour. Happy now?