Maiko Asami, the director of Black Triangle Design, had just handed over a collection of jewelry to the Harajuku shop Xanadu and was about to start promoting it when the earthquake hit. “We were still anxious if it would go well,” she recalls. “But to my surprise and happiness Cheap Coach Factory Outlet Online, the pieces sold out in a moment both at the boutique and online.” And the bigger surprise was that some of the orders had come in from Sendai or Miyagi — the most stricken areas. “I would never imagine people in the area care about what they wear when I was watching the news on TV, but they still seemed to like fashion even under such hard circumstances.”
Over in the Koenji neighborhood, which is the home of Tokyo’s punk music scene and countless secondhand stores, there stands, just barely, the Kita-Kore building. The ramshackle structure that many probably assumed would have gone down as the earthquake’s first fashion victim, is home to five small-scale but influential operations — Haratochiri, Nincompoop Capacity, Garter, Secret DOG and Ilil — each one equal parts used-clothing outlet and high-end recycling atelier. Ilil traffics in colorful embroidered sweatshirts and geta-sneakers (Nikes fused to Japanese wooden sandals). Garter specializes in body armor: heavy-handed — and heavily studded — accessories, making it Lady Gaga’s obvious choice on her recent visit to Japan. Secret DOG mixes cyberpunk with an ’80s Thierry Mugler vibe. When business ground to a halt this spring, the Kita-Kore crew took advantage of the downtime and applied their D.I.Y. initiative to conduct a massive renovation of their building’s interior. Garter, for one, expanded its space and decked it out in mirrors and gold tiles salvaged from a Louis Vuitton party. Koshiro Ebata, the store’s 21-year-old owner, now uses half of it to display the work of young designers, including the Giza Handmade jewelry collection of the 23-year-old D.J., singer and TV host Mademoiselle Yulia, and the cartoonish one-of-a-kind clothes and accessories of Tokyo’s club fashion king DJ Leo, sold under the label LeoCandycane.
Candy’s Yanagi and Sister’s Nagao predict that the true impact of 3/11 on fashion will reveal itself next season, adding, optimistically, that even people in Sendai will have interesting things to say and to create. “We don’t need fashion in this world,” Yanagi says. “But those of us who love it, really love it — and live for it.”
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“There were no parties Cheap Coach Factory Outlet Online, so all of a sudden I had all of this time on my hands,” Mademoiselle Yulia says. “So I stayed here at Kita-Kore and worked and made stuff — and it turned into a collection.” And rather than tone down her look (her Cleopatra bob is currently an electric shade of blue), Yulia took it upon herself to remain a style beacon. “As a D.J., part of my business is people looking at me, so my first thought was that I had to pull back. But people around said that I had to be a light and inspire them with color and fun, to do the opposite of what I thought was appropriate for the moment.”
This past July, Grimoire, the Shibuya boutique that helped create the Dolly Kei style — a lacy, lost-in-a-fairy-tale look layered in references to intricate storybook illustrations — held a big bash to celebrate its third anniversary and the opening of its second, and much larger, store, Grimoire Almadel. Young women turned up in droves, dressed in all manner of corseted, petticoated finery. In lieu of hats, more than a few capped their up-dos with elaborate flower arrangements. Indeed, as Hitomi Nomura, a co-owner of the store and one of the arbiters of this new fashion cult, pointed out, the party was an opportunity for Dolly Kei girls to really ramp up their looks after a period of relative reserve, adding that it also signaled a shift in taste from a short, tight silhouette and a palette of black and dark jewel tones in favor of beiges, pinks, light florals and a long and flowing, less-revealing silhouette.
“The girls were reserved in the beginning, wearing very practical clothing,” says Yumi Nagao, who runs the style-setting Shibuya boutique Sister. As a show of support for local talent, she amended her orders to include more Japanese designers, but the store maintains its flirty attitude. “After a couple of months, they came in wanting to get really dressed up, to really enjoy fashion again.” Candy, Sister’s more raucous downstairs neighbor, opened its doors the day after the earthquake, if only to instill a sense of normalcy. “The people who like to look cool and are really into fashion came all the way from Tohoku to shop here,” recalls Candy’s Shogo Yanagi. “They showed us photos and we talked about their lives.”
Months after 3/11 Cheap Coach Factory Outlet Online, as the catastrophic events of this spring have come to be called, it is clear that the Harajuku spirit couldn’t be dampened by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami or the threat of nuclear meltdown — such is the resilience of Tokyo street style. What might have been surprising, however, was the lack of a direct retort from the front lines: no hazmat chic. No M65 jackets. No accessorizing with survival gear except for a brief proliferation of utilitarian sneakers and backpacks — quick getaway chic, if you will. And these, of course, were worn with the requisite saucy schoolgirl uniforms or satin pajamas befitting Hugh Hefner. Veteran chroniclers of Tokyo street style, like the snapshot bloggers Daisuke Yokota of Droptokyo.com and Rei Shito of Style From Tokyo, testify that in Tokyo, street trends, like life, go on, as usual.
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shito/Style from tokyoBackpacks were literally big in Tokyo following 3/11.
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