@tokyo-fashion / tokyo-fashion.tumblr.com
A great Japanese musician and legendary Harajuku style icon has passed away. There was no band more popular with Harajuku visual kei fans of the 2005-2010 era. The famous Jingubashi bridge was full of REITA/GazettE cosplayers every weekend back then. RIP 🖤🖤🖤🖤
Street styles we shot in Harajuku with Y2K anime gyaru inspired fashion, kimono, a Hello Kitty plushies skirt, extreme hairstyles, a full body tattoo, RinRinDoll, and more.
Tokyo Fashion Week came to an official end this evening, but there are two fashion shows in Tokyo tomorrow (both of which we're excited about) - so it's not quite over for us...or you!
All of the street style in this set was shot at the debut menswear collection show of multi-award-winning Japanese fashion brand Anrealage. The brand usually shows in Paris, so the fact that they not only came back to Tokyo but did so for the first ever Anrealage Homme collection was a treat for Japanese fashion fans.
The thousand plus attendees that gathered at the massive Tokyo Telecom Center tonight witnessed another major milestone for a fast-rising fashion label that came up from the streets of Harajuku to be heralded as one of Japan's top young brands, joining labels like Sacai and Kolor in representing Japan on the world stage.
Anrealage designer Kunihiko Morinaga attended both the prestigious Waseda University (hello Yohji Yamamoto!) and Tokyo's Vantan Design Institute of Fashion. He launched Anrealage (A REAL UNREAL AGE) in 2003, debuted at Tokyo Collection in 2005, and debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2014. Morinaga has either won or been a runner-up for many top fashion prizes, including winning the Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix and being a top contender for the LVMH Prize.
In the years before the brand's meteoric rise to Paris and beyond, you'd often see Anrealage worn by fashion students, artists, and other creatives on the streets of Tokyo as well as in street snap magazines like FRUiTS and TUNE. Many of the brand's early iconic pieces were colorful handmade patchwork, instantly recognizable and treasured for their quality and one-of-a-kind nature. The debut Anrealage Homme runway show paid tribute to those early works with several patchwork-inspired looks, ensuring everyone in attendance that - no matter how famous his label gets - the designer has no intention of forgetting he started on the streets. One other reason that we were excited for the Anrealage show is that all of the headpieces in the show were designed by young (early 20s) fast-rising Japanese designer Nori Enomoto.
We first met Nori in Harajuku when she was just a fashionable high school student. In the few years since then, she graduated from high school, graduated from Tokyo's famous Bunka Fashion College, became a pattern maker for top Japanese labels, launched her own brand, began selling out all of her work as fast as she could make it, and started showing her work at exhibitions during Paris Fashion Week.
The fact that Nori is so young but was entrusted with the key headpieces for a major show by a major Japanese fashion brand says a lot about what her future likely holds. We expect to see her work on the runway more in the future and we recommend that you follow her rise as well if you aren't already.
Tokyo Fashion Week is over now, but we've got a few more shows and a lot of street style still to edit - so you'll likely see a few more updates from us in the next week! Thanks for following along! Please let us know if you'd like to see more Japanese street style here in the future.
Street Style we photographed at the debut menswear runway show of Japanese fashion brand Anrealage in Tokyo last night.
Anrealage has risen from the streets of Harajuku to become one of the big award winning Paris Fashion Week brands in the last twenty years, but they came back to Tokyo for the debut show of Anrealage Homme.
Day five of Tokyo Fashion Week is finished and we're back with more Japanese street style! Today's runway schedule wasn't the busiest, so we were wondering how the street style would be. It turned out to be pretty good. The big show for many fashion industry attendees was the Nordic lifestyle brand Marimekko, most famous for their colorful 1960s patterns. A show attendee told us that Marimekko has been making an effort to attract young cool consumers, which may be why they were one of the featured runway shows of the entire Tokyo Fashion Week.
The event we were most looking forward to today wasn't even on the official schedule - a private show and exhibition by underground Japanese fashion brand Balmung. Balmung has long been popular with Harajuku kids, underground Japanese idols, and lovers of high concept artistic fashion. Recently, the brand has had a huge influence on shaping Japan's Jirai Kei/Toyoko fashion boom (as many of the popular brands in that space have copied Balmung's most iconic designs, simplifying them and making them cheap for mass audiences). In addition to those two shows, there were Tokyo Fashion Week events in Harajuku/Omotesando and in Shibuya today. Enjoy the photos! We'll be back tomorrow with more street snaps from the final day of Fashion Week!
Street style we shot yesterday in Tokyo.
Tokyo Fashion Week day four was just as over the top as we expected. There were three different Japanese fashion shows at the famous Yoyogi National Stadium in Harajuku. Unlike last season's BAPE show, these were all at the large "Yoyogi #1" building where huge artists like Ayumi Hamasaki and Utada Hikaru hold concerts. The first two shows (AkikoAoki and Murral) used only parts of the stadium. Then came the main event - a highly anticipated open-to-the-public show by renowned Japanese designer Mikio Sakabe. We don't yet have the numbers for how many people attended Mikio's show, but it was one of the most highly attended Tokyo Fashion Week shows we've seen in at least a decade. The Mikio fashion show was followed by an after party with drinks and dancing inside of Yoyogi National Stadium, bringing about seven hours of fashion at Yoyogi to a fun close. We shot so many street snaps at the Mikio Sakabe show that we're going to publish them in their own set, since we need more time to go through all of the thousands of photos we took today.
In the meantime, these are the street snaps from fashion shows earlier in the day, including AkikoAoki and Murral. Some of the people in these snaps likely ended up at Mikio Sakabe (check for Grounds bubble shoes) as well, but we'll be back soon with lots of Mikio-only street style!
More street style we shot at Tokyo Fashion Week. All of these snaps were outside of Japanese fashion shows at Yoyogi National Stadium in Harajuku in March of 2024!!
The third day of Tokyo Fashion Week was colder than usual for March, but at least the rain from day two subsided. The highlight of today's fashion shows was Japanese brand Fetico at the beautiful Tokyo National Museum in Ueno. We also shot street style outside of fashion shows in Shibuya & Aoyama, as well as a kimono fashion show in Omotesando/Harajuku today.
Tomorrow is the graduation ceremony for Japan's most famous fashion school, Bunka Fashion College, followed in the evening by the Mikio Sakabe fashion show at Yoyogi Stadium. We expect the convergence of these two events to lead to a fashionable celebratory crowd both inside and outside of the Mikio show, which should be great for shooting street style. Please check back tomorrow to see if that prediction comes true!
50+ news street snaps from Tokyo Fashion Week shot in Shibuya, Aoyama, Ueno, and Omotesando/Harajuku!!
Tokyo Fashion Week 2024 Autumn/Winter kicked off this weekend. The schedule this season lacks big big names like last season's BAPE show, but we're excited for the return of loved-in-Harajuku Japanese designer Mikio Sakabe.
Both Mikio Sakabe and AkikoAoki announced early that they would be allowing anyone who wants to see a show this season to apply for a free ticket to their highly anticipated Thursday night shows at the famous Yoyogi National Stadium in Harajuku.
The first day of this Tokyo Fashion Week featured subculture art-indie brand Pays Des Fees, bringing out an eclectic crowd including Japanese fashion and art students. It's early, but so far we see no signs that the Y2K boom is subsiding, and over-the-top sunglasses are the accessory du jour. As with last season, lots of Rick Owens KISS boots on the street outside of the shows as well. Enjoy the street snaps and we'll be back with more tomorrow!
Tokyo Fashion Week has started and we'll be shooting street style all week, as usual!
It’s available in both print and digital from Sutherland House Books!
Tokyo, in the early aughts, was a weird place. Lonely single men wanted to marry action figures instead of women. High school girls worked at maid cafes and were paid to act like Manga characters. Nightclubs filled with kids in anime cosplay who danced to remixed versions of cartoon theme songs.
People’s private obsessions, once confined to bedrooms and computer screens, were transforming entire city blocks.
Patrick Macias was there, chronicling the emergence of “Cool Japan” in a famous blog entitled “An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla.” Now with biting humor and cultural insight, he looks back on the trends, personalities, and happenings that dominated the bleeding edge of Japanese pop culture in those years. You’ll meet maids who imitate Michael Jackson, anime producers sent to prison for guns and drugs, school girls determined to resurrect surf rock, nightclubbers who worship “uncool foreigners,” and all manner of wide-eyed ex-pats, weirdoes, and dreamers who came to Tokyo in search of a stranger, more surreal version of life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Macias is the editor in chief of Otaku USA magazine, the founding editor of Crunchyroll News, and the author of numerous books about Japanese pop culture, including TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion. In addition to contributing liner notes to the Criterion Collection and Arrow Video, he also wrote the original story for the anime series URAHARA, which was simulcast globally in 2017. Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Patrick now lives in Tokyo, Japan. Learn more at www.patrickmaciaswrites.com
New interview with Yen, a Taiwanese punk singer/guitarist who lives in Japan and has become a well known personality in Harajuku’s kawaii fashion scene. She works at the famous Harajuku kawaii boutique 6%DOKIDOKI and will start Bunka Fashion College later this year.
Snowy evening tonight (February 5, 2024) in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood.
Young Japanese people celebrating Japan's Coming of Age Day while wearing traditional fashion outside of Meiji Jingu Shrine in Harajuku in January 2024. If you want to see kimono being worn on the streets of Japan, Coming of Age Day is the one day a year when you still see people wearing them everywhere.
Congratulations to all of the new adults!!
Everyone we know is tagged on Instagram. The person wearing geta on the far right in the fifth photo told us that he's the drummer in a Japanese straight edge hardcore band and that he painted his Coming of Age Day outfit himself.
Japanese teens are wearing Hello Kitty bouquets on the street in Harajuku recently after McDonald's Japan released 50 different Hello Kitty plushie designs that come free with Happy Meals. One of the most popular free McDonald's Japan Hello Kitty designs is a Gyaru Kitty.
New Harajuku street interview with young Japanese fashion designer/student Haruki. He’s one of the most ambitious Bunka Fashion College students in the Tokyo street style scene, known for his kimono remakes and extreme denim creations.
Interview by Ito.
FRUiTS Magazine/Harajuku inspired a group of creatives in Los Angeles to start a similar street style magazine called FRUTAS to document Los Angeles street style, with a focus on "uplifting the intricacies of Chicano and Latino culture".
Street snaps taken at the fall 2023 Bunka Fashion College school festival in Tokyo. Everyone we know is tagged on Instagram.
