Takeji Hirakawa
Fashion critic
01 May 2008
Introduction
An interview with Japanese fashion critic Takeji Hirakawa.
I was really surprised to see high-fashion magazines like Spur and Ginza pick up the same trends as low fashion magazines like CanCam, and it's not like the CanCam editors are going to the European shows.
Yes, editors at the CanCam level are not going to the foreign shows. The main source of "Japanese fashion" comes from the street. Post-war fashion for men started with Ivy league casual wear like the brand Van. Even now, casual is the mainstream, and the roots of casual are on the street. So "Japanese fashion" has the organic-growth from the streets rubbing against the luxury goods made in Paris. But essentially, the Japanese fashion ethic is street casual. The big source for that is the American sports casual wear that came into Japan after the war: sporty, every-day wear.
CanCam-like magazines are street fashion, basically.
But Spur and the low fashion magazines are picking up the same trends like color tights.
That's because media are all starting to homogenize.
They weren't doing the same trends ten years ago?
No, there was a gap. The fashion world, along with the economy, has become globalized. Look at production: in the past, if Dior wasn't made in France, it wasn't Dior. Now all the French factory does is make the "aesthetics" for Dior. Dior goods have such media power that products made in Hong Kong, China, and Africa all sell well just by attaching the Dior brand.
The way of looking at fashion after globalization in the 21st century is what I think of as "fashion DJs." There is no way to make anything new, in a creative sense. I think that "creation" completely ended in the 15-20 years I have been watching fashion since 1985. As long as the human body does not change, there are no more ways to create anything new. If we started to have three or four arms, then creations would change. But that's not going to happen.
In our era, the designers' job is just "sampling" of the past or "remixing" or "remodeling."
I believe that there used to be "fashion creators" who lived in their own world and made their own creations. Then when Tom Ford showed up in 1992, we got a new category of "fashion directors," who do merchandising for brands based on an specific image. Tom Ford has never studied fashion himself, but he doesn't need to know anything about fashion design. He can say, "This is what's right for our era" and direct the creation of cool things and work towards a "Gucci" flavor. That is what a fashion director does.
Now we have Raf Simons. He works for Jil Sander just as a fashion director. A year before he worked for Jil Sander, he was a visiting fashion professor at the University of Applied Arts at Vienna. When he got the Jil Sander job, he brought together all the young students and teachers around him and formed a team to send things to Jil Sander. The directors now sit in between those actually sew the clothes and the designers.
Last, you have those working at Japanese apparel companies doing merchandising. I call the young designers who came up from the streets "fashion DJs." When they think about what to design, they design the "atmosphere" of the times or sample or remix. The archetype for a "fashion DJ" is the designer Jun Takahashi of the brand Undercover.
Yes, editors at the CanCam level are not going to the foreign shows. The main source of "Japanese fashion" comes from the street. Post-war fashion for men started with Ivy league casual wear like the brand Van. Even now, casual is the mainstream, and the roots of casual are on the street. So "Japanese fashion" has the organic-growth from the streets rubbing against the luxury goods made in Paris. But essentially, the Japanese fashion ethic is street casual. The big source for that is the American sports casual wear that came into Japan after the war: sporty, every-day wear.
CanCam-like magazines are street fashion, basically.
But Spur and the low fashion magazines are picking up the same trends like color tights.
That's because media are all starting to homogenize.
They weren't doing the same trends ten years ago?
No, there was a gap. The fashion world, along with the economy, has become globalized. Look at production: in the past, if Dior wasn't made in France, it wasn't Dior. Now all the French factory does is make the "aesthetics" for Dior. Dior goods have such media power that products made in Hong Kong, China, and Africa all sell well just by attaching the Dior brand.
The way of looking at fashion after globalization in the 21st century is what I think of as "fashion DJs." There is no way to make anything new, in a creative sense. I think that "creation" completely ended in the 15-20 years I have been watching fashion since 1985. As long as the human body does not change, there are no more ways to create anything new. If we started to have three or four arms, then creations would change. But that's not going to happen.
In our era, the designers' job is just "sampling" of the past or "remixing" or "remodeling."
I believe that there used to be "fashion creators" who lived in their own world and made their own creations. Then when Tom Ford showed up in 1992, we got a new category of "fashion directors," who do merchandising for brands based on an specific image. Tom Ford has never studied fashion himself, but he doesn't need to know anything about fashion design. He can say, "This is what's right for our era" and direct the creation of cool things and work towards a "Gucci" flavor. That is what a fashion director does.
Now we have Raf Simons. He works for Jil Sander just as a fashion director. A year before he worked for Jil Sander, he was a visiting fashion professor at the University of Applied Arts at Vienna. When he got the Jil Sander job, he brought together all the young students and teachers around him and formed a team to send things to Jil Sander. The directors now sit in between those actually sew the clothes and the designers.
Last, you have those working at Japanese apparel companies doing merchandising. I call the young designers who came up from the streets "fashion DJs." When they think about what to design, they design the "atmosphere" of the times or sample or remix. The archetype for a "fashion DJ" is the designer Jun Takahashi of the brand Undercover.