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I only rarely go “off topic” and talk about something outside the Japanese fashion remit, but then again you cannot deny how important Rick Owens is in the world of Japanese fashion and moreover his work is very important to me personally. One of my favorite haunts of the Aoyama area is the Rick Owens flagship replete with a “Godzilla” waxwork version of the nude Rick Owens himself sporting a wooden claw and not a lot else. It is a shop that manages to create its very own atmosphere free from the saturation and haste of Tokyo aside, austere and stern, but at the same [...]
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Sometime last year (or maybe it was even the year before – argh), we started using the Instagram app (we’re tokyotelephone, of course!) to share some of our photos around Tokyo, and now I thought that in the spirit of the season, I’d take a look back at some of our best hipsterific faux-vintage bits…
(All left to right, top to bottom)
Row one: New business cards with fancy QR code – I feel like I’m the future!, Liz Lisa’s catwalk show, beautiful autumn leaves.
Row two: Yoyogi park on a very clear day, the steps to Southpaw at [...]
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Akemashite Omedetou! Happy New Year to all from Tokyo Telephone!
This is an opportunity to draw an end to the last year (as we did yesterday) and focus on the coming one – a chance to leave it all behind, because if you haven’t learned anything from it by now, you probably never will! Here at Tokyo Telephone we are feeling good about our last year, but we know that we can and need to do better. It is all too easy online to be passive and let things come to you via press releases and lookbooks (which do save us a lot of time), [...]
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Okay, so where did 2011 go? It seems like only the other day we were sweltering in light t-shirts and now it’s freezing cold!
Needless to say 2011 was a pretty pivotal year for Japan, and I’m sure we don’t need to tell you that. The events of March have left a shadow over the country as a whole, yet here at Tokyo Telephone we took the decision to carry on – Japan is still a beautiful and amazing country, the Japanese people have been incredible in dealing with all that’s happened, and we both wanted to continue to promote Japanese fashion talent as much as [...]
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A very Merry Christmas to all our readers, whether you celebrate the season or not (or do so under an alternative label) you have our heartiest seasons greetings, and we are very happy you are reading this at all given that you should be filling your face with good food and generally having a day off. Don’t worry, that is exactly what we are doing, but we thought we would take the time to try and come up with a “Christmas Message” of sorts (a bit like our good old Queen back in the UK!) to give you a very personal message of the season.
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Right, let’s get this out there: I frigging love Christmas. Religious significance aside, it’s the one day of the year where everyone comes together to give each things they don’t really want, drink too much champagne & sherry, eat far too much, have a blazing row and watch rubbish films and the Queen’s speech. Amazing. I love twinkly lights, plastic trees and walking around all bundled up. I love roast potatoes, and trying to hide brussels sprouts. Christmas in Japan is always a bit weird as it’s not really a proper seasonal holiday like in the UK, and we talk to our families via the internet – I [...]
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What do I want for Christmas this year? To be honest, not all that much. I don’t really need anything and while I do always appreciate receiving presents, when someone just “gives” you something it can take away half the relationship you have when you “earn” something by hunting it down, meeting designers, fans and making friends along the way and maybe even negotiating a final favorable price right at the end. I know that is not a particularly accesible vision of how consumption “ought” to work, but when it does happen it is a really special experience. I will always wax lyrical about how the early silver designers like Gabor used [...]
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It is with enormous pride that I can now announce that one of your team here at Tokyo Telephone will be now be working with The Japan Times newspaper as a Stylewise columnist. This follows on from my menswear coverage of Tokyo fashion week for the newspaper, which I would advise you to check out here if you haven’t quite managed to get round to it yet, but this time I will be concentrating on general menswear news for the paper which will give me a nice opportunity to talk about things that might not necessarily fit the tone of this site.
Anyway, the most important thing [...]
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The working title for the post was something like “Nakano – knackered? No!” but I have since rejected this for a couple of reasons, not just because it was a really crap pun (worse then usual?!), but mostly because half the photos here were taken of, well, the knackered bits of Nakano.
My friend B suggested that I take some photos of the more run-down aspects of Tokyo again, and I was kind of looking for an excuse to go for a walk – it was sunny, quite crisp, and walking from Koenji to Nakano is that kind of perfect journey on foot [...]
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Last night at the Christian Dada S/S 2012 show as the exhibition hall at Belle Salle gradually filled to bursting point I was made very acutely aware that within that one room there was well over 50% of the Tokyo underground fashion scene – from the guys from Berberjin clad in studded rags, to the Candy club kids, Tune regulars and everyone in between. On one hand it felt like you were part of a vast crowd, but at the same time that group of like-minded people is very very small relative to the total fashion scene in Tokyo, tiny compared to the mainstream and a dot [...]
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…We love ‘em!
I was thinking the other day about uniforms and appropriate clothing and what I seem to end up wearing day after day. One of my Japanese friends asked me the other day why all fashion people wear black, and I’m almost ashamed to say that my answer was that black is both undeniably cool… and easy to wear! I know, I know, it’s ridiculous that as someone who writes about Japanese fashion on a daily basis that I actually tend to dress quite simply. My tried-and-tested go-to outfit will always be boots, black trousers and a leather jacket. Bags and accessories may come [...]
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Perhaps I should amend the title to call this a small selection of our favourite Japanese fashion books?
The only thing I love more than Japanese fashion is reading (and Samuel, of course!). So, inevitably, I get a bit giddy when I get my hands on books about Japanese fashion, and I thought I’d take opportunity here to share some of my picks from our vast library. I’ve chosen books in English as I hope they’ll be more accessible to a wider audience and easier to find if you do decide to purchase any. (We also have a million billion more fashion books in Japanese, so if you’d [...]
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