Fashion
What people actually wear. The kimono and the people still making one by hand; the 1981 Paris collections that arrived in black; Harajuku photographed weekly for twenty years; and the small Okayama mills that make the best denim in the world.
Part of Japan
44 moments in this segment.
- - [Two Japanese Women in Traditional Dress with Fan and Screen]. Photograph, 1870s, Japan, Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access; digitised reproduction of the original artefact.
- - Yohji Yamamoto's 1981 Tokyo show, to Gang of Four. Archive footage from the opening of Yohji Yamamoto's 180-look show at the Den-en Colosseum in Tokyo in 1981, the year he and Rei Kawakubo also debuted in Paris.
- - Loose socks on Center-gai, 1997. TV Asahi archive of Shibuya schoolgirl style in 1997: loose socks, some over a metre long, which entered the new-words-and-buzzwords top ten in 1996, and me Jane shopping bags.
- - Heisei gyaru on Shibuya Center-gai, 1999. TV Asahi news archive of the autumn-winter 1999 look among Shibuya gyaru: sleeveless knits with arm warmers, filmed around Center-gai and Shibuya 109.
- - USMC-20421. yukata summer kimono festival photograph. The Toukasan festival is also known as the Yukata Festival, starting the beginning of the yukata wearing season. The yukata is a lightweight cotton kimono worn during the summer season. In Japan, the yukata is widely worn for everything from festivals, speci
- - SAKURAKO joins in the Bon festival dance. (7785887060). yukata summer kimono festival photograph. My daughter. ＠大通公園での子供盆踊りに参加 （櫻子さん、3歳10ヶ月）
- - FRUiTS magazine issue 203, June 2014. Shoichi Aoki's own upload of an issue of FRUiTS, the Harajuku street-style magazine he founded in 1997 and closed in 2017, saying there were no longer enough well-dressed young people to photograph.
- - Harajuku subcultures: gothic Lolita to Yoyogi rockabilly. Refinery29's Style Out There in Harajuku, meeting the wearers behind Tokyo's street tribes, in a district where uniforms govern dress from primary school onwards.
- - Decora explained, with FRUiTS founder Shoichi Aoki. Short Refinery29 piece on decora, the layered-accessory Harajuku style, featuring designer Kurebayashi and FRUiTS magazine founder Shoichi Aoki.
- - Inside Yohji Yamamoto's fashion philosophy. Business of Fashion interview with Yamamoto covering the highs and lows of a career of more than forty years.
- - Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between at the Met. Gallery tour of the Costume Institute's 2017 exhibition on Rei Kawakubo, narrated by curator Andrew Bolton; only the second time the Met devoted its spring show to a living designer.
- - Hiroshi Fujiwara in conversation at Sole DXB. Hiroshi Fujiwara, founder of Fragment Design and a central figure in the Ura-Harajuku streetwear scene, talks to Jeff Staple at Sole DXB 2017.
- - A hundred years of school uniforms in Kojima. Okayama Broadcasting on Kojima, where uniform production began in 1918 and where 27 makers now hold about 70 percent of the Japanese market, alongside handwork techniques still done at home.
- - Yohji Yamamoto at the Oxford Union. Full address and question session by Yohji Yamamoto, whose 1981 Paris debut alongside Rei Kawakubo reset what Western fashion thought clothing could be.
- - Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (2018-01-08 18.12.30 by Dick Thomas Johnson), a second example by Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo. Harajuku street fashion Tokyo. 原宿ファッションストリートスナップ (2018年01月08日)
- - Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (2018-01-08 18.18.47 by Dick Thomas Johnson). Harajuku street fashion Tokyo. 原宿ファッションストリートスナップ (2018年01月08日)
- - Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (2018-01-08 18.29.27 by Dick Thomas Johnson), a third example by Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo. Harajuku street fashion Tokyo. 原宿ファッションストリートスナップ (2018年01月08日)
- - How Comme des Garcons shocked the Paris catwalk. Asian Art Museum on the early 1980s, when Japanese avant-garde designers disrupted Paris haute couture with minimal, deconstructed clothing.
- - Kenzo Takada dies at 81. South China Morning Post obituary for Kenzo Takada, who died of Covid-19 in Paris on 4 October 2020; he was the first Japanese designer to gain real standing in Paris fashion.
- - Kenzo: an archival designer profile. Videofashion's archive profile of Kenzo Takada, published after his death, on the colour and exoticism he brought into Paris ready-to-wear.
- - The history of A Bathing Ape. How Nigo built BAPE out of the Ura-Harajuku scene, alongside Hiroshi Fujiwara of Fragment and Jun Takahashi of Undercover, from the Nowhere store onwards.
- - Yohji Yamamoto in his Tokyo studio, V&A interview. Victoria and Albert Museum film shot in Yamamoto's Tokyo studio in 2011, in which he reflects on thirty years of work and on the difficulty of designing menswear.
- - Fashion waste, Bunka students and Shibuya 109. TV Tokyo on a pop-up in which Bunka Fashion College students worked with SHIBUYA 109 on garments addressing textile waste and overproduction.
- - Inside the jeans makers of Kojima. French series Asie Insolite travels to Kojima, the birthplace of the Japanese jeans industry, visiting the mills and makers that supply the global selvedge trade.
- - Discarded kimono remade into modern dresses. Yomiuri TV on upcycling kimono, a garment tradition over a thousand years old and once everyday wear, now rarely worn and often thrown away, into contemporary dresses.
- - Issey Miyake dies aged 84. BBC News report on the death of Issey Miyake in August 2022, and the tributes to a designer who joined traditional Japanese technique with industrial innovation.
- - Issey Miyake after Miyake: the Spring 2023 show in Paris. Analysis of the first Issey Miyake runway show in Paris following the designer's death, directed by Satoshi Kondo, set against the Pleats Please legacy.
- - How handmade Japanese jeans are cut and sewn. Japanese-language workshop film following a denim craftsman making jeans entirely by hand, part of a series documenting Japanese manufacturing.
- - Inside a Japanese school uniform factory, 170 years old. Workshop film following mass production at Kanko Gakuseifuku, a uniform maker in Okayama, the prefecture that dominates Japanese school uniform manufacture.
- - Comme des Garcons Spring 1997: Body Meets Dress. Detailed study of Rei Kawakubo's 'lumps and bumps' collection, which padded the body into unfamiliar shapes and became one of the most argued-over shows in fashion.
- - Harajuku's fashion rebirth. South China Morning Post on how Harajuku, once a quiet corner of Shibuya Ward, became an international street-fashion centre, and what the district looks like now.
- - Momotaro Jeans: the craftsmen of Kojima, Okayama. Interviews with the denim craftsmen at Momotaro Jeans, founded in Kojima, Okayama in 2006, in the district that supplies most of the world's Japanese selvedge denim.
- - Samurai Aloha: old kimono cut into shirts for tourists. TV Asahi on Samurai Aloha, which remakes secondhand kimono into aloha shirts selling at 27,000 yen each, taking roughly 3 million yen a month from a one-tsubo counter at Narita Airport.
- - Where the ganguro gyaru came from, and why they vanished. Researcher Yuka Kubo, author of a study of gyaru culture, on the origins of ganguro in Shibuya, its links to surf culture and the postwar American secondhand clothing trade around what is now 109.
- - Prewar suits: 1920s and 1930s tailoring examined. A Tokyo tailor examines original 1920s and 1930s suits, the era in which Western tailoring settled into Japanese men's dress.
- - CNBC: how Uniqlo won over North America. CNBC on Fast Retailing, now the world's second largest apparel retailer after Inditex, and the minimal functional design behind Uniqlo's global expansion.
- - Issey Miyake Spring/Summer 2025 fashion film. Wallpaper* presentation of the Issey Miyake S/S 2025 collection by Satoshi Kondo, head of the label's womenswear since Miyake's death.
- - Bunka Fashion College students show at Tokyo fashion week. Bunka Fashion College, the school that trained Kenzo, Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe, presents its selected students' 'individual' collection at Laforet Harajuku on 9 March 2025, its first appearance at Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo.
- - Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo A/W 2025: HYKE, tokio, KEISUKEYOSHIDA. Street-style photographer Rei Shito's report from the autumn/winter 2025 Tokyo shows, covering HYKE, tokio and KEISUKEYOSHIDA.
- - 360 years of the suit, with fashion historian Kaori Nakano. Fashion historian Kaori Nakano on the origins of the suit and its long path to the garment worn in Japanese offices today.
- - How the suit reached Japan and became the working uniform. Professor Risho Tanaka of Bunka Gakuen University's fashion sociology department traces the suit in Japan from the end of the Edo period through Meiji Westernisation to the modern salaryman.
- - A history of Lolita fashion. Japanese-language history of Lolita, tracing how the style emerged from Japanese kawaii culture and split into its many sub-genres.
- - Yohji Yamamoto in conversation with Tim Blanks, at 80. System magazine's extended interview, filmed in 2024, in which Yamamoto tells Tim Blanks 'I can't change the world, but maybe I can change the idea of beauty.'
- - Saving Selvedge: a raw denim documentary in Japan. Feature-length documentary on Japanese raw selvedge denim and menswear craft, filmed on location with Japanese makers.
