Currently viewing the tag: "gothic"
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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I love bags. Although I’ve had to down-size recently, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to increase my collection again soon…
I’m currently toting around a huge and battered Vivienne Westwood grey leopard print bag, which may have seen better days but still manages to fit everything from small umbrellas and huge numbers of keys, to spare make-up, text books and more tubes of lipgloss than one person could ever possibly need. When I’m in the mood to dress to impress, I have a lovely little Vivienne Westwood (I’m sensing a theme here!) bag with huge gold orb, or I borrow one of Samuel’s amazing leather [...]
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Skulls are perhaps the most instantly engaging subject in art and fashion. I very much doubt that the recent Skull Cup could have been carried out with any other motif in the jewelry world and likewise if you want to garner attention instantly in art, then there are few better ways to do it that by exploring the possibilities of the human skull.
Katsuyo Aoki is a magnificently talented artist trained in Tokyo who currently works almost exclusively in ceramics which has lent her study into skulls a suitably ghostly sheen and thematically sits comfortably with a subject that posits the fragility of life.
It is a testament to how good the Silver Creators Exhibition was in Shibuya last year that almost 1 year on I am still leafing through piles of brochures and catalogues and finding yet more brilliant designers that I simply have to write about before I am loaded up with more fresh designers this year. Having said that Glam Scale have been in the business under the name Cyence since 2005, but it is the designers very recent futuristic designs that caught my attention and apparently every other silver collector I know as I have been hit with a deluge of emails asking if I know of this guy [...]
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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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It seems that the triangle the go-to shape for many a hipster, and of course Gareth Pugh. We’re no strangers to the joy of triangles here at Tokyo Telephone; the beautiful wa-punk NOMI jacket made with me has a huge one in kimono fabric and studs on the back. The triangle has been used in a huge number of cultures with different meanings throughout history, and while I have less than fond memories of learning Pythagoras’ theorum in stuffy maths classrooms, there’s something incredibly satisfying about equilateral triangles… Enter Black Triangle Design.
I first became aware of Black Triangle Design though one of [...]
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I’m so in love with the neo-goth/dark-haute/watchamacallit fashion movement that’s going on right now, and Masahiko Maruyama‘s Nude autumn winter 2011 collection for women ties in beautifully. Long gone are the baggy trousers and stripy armwarmers I remember from my youth (or should that be yoof?), replaced with elegant drapes and futuristics shapes. Plus a few crucifixes chucked in for good measure. Goth has grown up, and I love it.
I hesitate to use the term ‘mannish’ when describing this collection – instead I think I’ll plump for ‘genderless’ instead. Mannish to me brings to mind the kind of language used in gyaru magazines when they use items such [...]
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nude: masahiko maruyama can always be relied on for a sombre call to arms against the usual glitz and glamour that goes hand in hand with fashion week, and nude does this simple gothic austerity with such skill that it makes you want to abandon all frivolity and retreat to their wardrobe of drapes and black – lots of black. nude’s compact collections are always knowingly genderless with many items re-occurring in both the males and female lines (check out aptform for more of this) and as anyone who knows us personally here at Tokyo Telephone will attest to – this is a matter that strikes very close to our [...]
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I love Juvenile Hall Rollcall. It’s been a while since I last wrote about this brand, but you may remember the patched denim, huge knits and bits of bone that ensured JHRC have remained on my fashion radar ever since.
Part of what I like to refer to as the ‘Root magazine crew’ ( some of the most exciting young Japanese designers such as Banal Chic Bizarre, Hiro and Christian Dada – the latter is now gaining well-deserved international recognition, and well done to him!), Juvenile Hall Rollcall’s latest collection somewhat macabrely titled “Do you realise everyone you know will someday die?”, (from “Do you [...]
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Even though I’m a bit freaked out by the 1990s fashion resurgence that seems to be happening in all the cool corners of the internet (it’s very odd to see certain trends like tiny backbacks and cycling shorts and stuff I used to wear as a little goth teenager in the early 2000s; chokers, beaded bracelets, etc), it’s spurred me on to write a bit about Tokyo Bopper, one of my favourite Japan-native shoe brands.
As a child, I was just the right age for the Spice Girls craze, and even though I wasn’t a superfan, I did have a rather fetching pair of denim [...]
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London’s Bethnal Green might not be the natural habitat for a fan of lolita fashion, but last Saturday it was frills a-go-go as Lolita in Wonderland put on their second event; Through the Looking Glass.
From classic to gothic, via dandy and sweet, there was a fan of every lolita fashion sub-style in attendance – a fair representation of the burgeoning lolita fashion scene in the UK. I remember (cue wavy lines and twinkly music) way back in the day when there were at most fifty people in the country who were interested and the huge London meet-ups were the talk of the town. Oh, how we [...]
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Trawling through my extensive magazine collection the other day (the magazines have formed alliances based on fashion subcultures ranked in chronological order; now they have unions and are threatening to overtake the entire bookcase and probably Telephone Towers after that. I haven’t seen the floor in months. They’re always up to something…), I thought it might be nice/interesting/useful to highlight a couple of the more specialist publications I have. This brings me to Cutie Interiors (this edition: February 2011), a brilliant mook (magazine-book) by, as you’ve guessed, the publishers of every girl-on-the-street’s favourite magazine, Cutie.
They say you can tell a lot about a person by [...]
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