Japanese fashion is a pretty tight-knit place, generally brands exist in groups tied together by funding, stockists and magazines. One such group that ticks all those boxes is that formed by Hiro, Christian Dada, Yeah Right!!, Gilet!, Children of the Discordance and Juvenile Hall Rollcall who populate the pages of Root Magazine, share shelves in Harajuku’s Acycle and even swap ideas and techniques across their respective collections.
Now Yeah Right!! has instigated a “Common Sleeve” project to tie those brands even closer together than any collaboration could hope to. The concept is simple – each brand will produce a couple of key outers for this A/W with detachable sleeves which by virtue of uniform zips and fasteners will be cross compatible with every other outer produced as part of the project. The idea being that not only can you have fun switching arms amongst your own wardrobe, but also with your friends and don’t forget that you can always go sleeveless if the mood takes you.
I am always one for a gimmick, and this one is particularly good by my standards. On top of that it gives you the opportunity to salute two great designers at a time as well as further decreasing the odds of that awful occurrence when you bump into someone in Tokyo wearing the exact same thing… Anyway, on with the lookbook which features this model and is coincidentally produced with STOF and styled by Macaronic’s Takashi Aoki (It is like a who’s who of Harajuku!)
There is a lot to like here regardless of your fashion orientation, personally I find myself drawn to the dark edge of Christian Dada mixed with the organic fusion of Gilet, but you may differ. I suppose that is the genius of this collection that you can have fun mixing the brands together, not just in an outfit, but on a far more fundamental level.
If you were wondering who created what in the above lookbook then here is a selection of the outers that have gone into it:
So there you have it, one of the most positive and exciting projects for this A/W, by the biggest names in Tokyo fashion right now. This group has to be the one to watch right now and I can think of no better ambassadors of the Ura-Harajuku aesthetic. Now I just have to decide which pair it is going to be for me…
I have been designing tshirts for a few months now based on this same idea of swapping bits. Bit miffed now
@ Gem
Sorry to hear that, what can I say – great minds must think alike