Vol.82 “Japan Fashion Now” at

“Japan Fashion Now” at

“Japan Fashion Now”, an interesting exhibition at New York’s F.I.T .
(Fashion Institute of Technology~ )until January 8, 2011, explores

contemporary Japanese fashion – both avant-garde looks of the 80’s and

current youth-orientated street styles.

It starts out with a group of innovative black clothes from Rei Kawakubo at
Comme des Garcons, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto, who started
showing their clothes in Paris in 1980.

It also introduces street fashion, with several sub-culture variations,
including stage costumes for pop singers and cosplay
(short for “Costume Play”) garments for their fans.

As a background, cityscapes of 21st Century Tokyo streets were painted in
graphic black and white. It is a strange experience to see Japanese fashion
“floating” in black and white space. There were colorful outfits from
Comme des Garcons, Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara and Issey Miyake
(designed by Takizawa Naoki), in the Ometesando streets.

In the next section with photo images of Shibuya and Harajuku streets,
there are items worn by motorcycle gangs, school uniforms and
examples of “Cute” fashion, which represent distinct sub-cultures.
Pop idol singers, “Hangry and Angry”, represent “Cute” wearing Punk
Gothic Lolita styles by n.NAOTO.

I can see from this exhibition, that “Cute” is receiving a lot of attention
in Europe and America. Street fashion slides are also shown in this section.
Even though these pictures were chosen on purpose, after I saw so many
photos of young people wearing Gothic Punk fashion, I was concerned over
whether or not they would be OK in the future.
Japanese men’s fashion was on display as well, featuring some powerful
Styles with bold graphics.

Valerie Steele, the museum’s Director, said that contemporary Japanese
fashion is “Bleeding Edge”, rather than merely “Cutting Edge”.
It means that Japanese contemporary fashion embraced by young people
around the world on many levels, is positioned for an even larger future.
The New York Times ran a full page article on this exhibit, entitled
“Japan’s Raw Edges”, which explained that collections recently shown
in Paris and New York reflected a significant influence by Japanese fashion.



Their use of the word “raw”, which can be used to describe the rough,
unfinished or undefined, is interesting, because in slang it can also mean
“the latest”.