The Japanese flag

Japan’s economy shrinks 3.3% (IHT)
The world’s second largest economy is experiencing its worst downturn in 35 years.

H&M sales boosted by new openings (Drapers)
Driven by new store openings, H&M’s sales rose 9% in January.

Sombre start to NYFW (Drapers)
“New York Fashion Week got off to a somewhat sombre start on Friday, according to reports from the US, with collection sizes reduced by up to 25%.”

New York week opens with an ’80s glam slam (IHT)
“Rather than leaping into the future, designers are looking back to a previous period when women were strong, powerful and dressed to suit: the 1980s.”

Forever 21 to Open Larger Concept in L.A. (WWD)
“Fast-fashion chain Forever 21 plans to launch a prototype in California this year that will double its average store size.” (Subscription required)

Comme des Garçons for H&M

TOKYO, Japan - Back in September, H&M experienced one of the most successful Japanese market entries in recent history, with its first store in Ginza drawing incredible mass media coverage and never-ending lines. Now two months later, H&M will open its next Japanese store on November 8 in the youth fashion district of Harajuku.

Japanese customers lucky enough to make it through the long queue on Saturday morning will be the first worldwide to be able to buy the latest limited-edition guest-collaboration line: H & M COMME des GARÇONS. For the rest of the world, H&M Comme des Garçons will debut on November 13 in more than 200 H&M stores around the world.

To learn more, we sat down first with H&M’s Creative Advisor Margareta Van Den Bosch and Brand & New Business Director Jörgen Andersson in Tokyo to talk about the Rei Kawakubo collaboration.

BoF: Please tell us the basics of the H&M Comme des Garçons line.

Van Den Bosch (V): There are twenty pieces for men and thirty pieces for women. There are some accessories. I think it feels like a typical Comme des Garçons collection. Rei Kawakubo made all the samples for us. She made the patterns. We had a lot of sending garments between us. We only met two times, but we had a lot of correspondence with garments. She would see every style and say yes or no. She watched every detail and approved everything.

BoF: Where there limits on materials or extravagance?

No. Of course we talked about the idea that some pieces could be at a lower-price level and some could be a little more expensive. In terms of quality, we worked with wool and cotton and other high quality fabrics. Some of the pieces are at the upper price level but we also have T-shirts.

Andersson (A): When we first approached her, we approached her with the philosophical idea of “contradiction.” There is a contradiction between H&M and Comme des Garçons. H&M is very mass market, selling to reasonable prices. Whereas CdG has a completely different price level and is also very artistic. So I think she was then challenged to see, how can I maintain my integrity as a brand, but meet the demands of the mass market. So I think she went into the creative process with that in the back of her head.

V: We also thought it was nice after (Roberto) Cavalli — a very sexy, glamorous designer — to choose someone like Kawakubo who is arty and cool. So I think it’s a big contrast.

BoF: Will there be more H&M CdG product allocated for the Japanese market?

A: We have estimated that the demand will definitely be highest here, but we are still trying to balance what we do in all markets, trying to balance between the mass market and exclusivity to create “massclusivity.” Because we still believe if you buy the show piece [dress], you don’t want to see too many other women dressed in the same way. It is limited-edition. It’s supposed to sell out, but maybe the previous collaboration being sold out within half an hour, that’s maybe a bit too fast. Because then there are a lot of disappointed customers. Hopefully we have managed to find a good balance in quantity.

But we also want to tell the customer, you have to be there when we open up the store in order to make sure to get something. I make the comparison with trying to go to a concert: we sell tickets but you have to show up. You can expect to still get tickets after a week.

BoF: Will you do another production run if the line sells out immediately?

A: No. We did one.

BoF: Is the sizing of the collection going to fit like CdG or H&M?

V: We have made the pieces to our fit, our measurements. But these are her patterns, of course.

BoF: Will the collection be sold at locations other than H&M?

A: We will work together with 10 Corso Como in Milan and in Seoul. So it will be picked up by them, because we did a similar collaboration with them when we did Marimekko. When they heard about this new collaboration, they contacted us again and said, can we sell it? H&M is not yet in Korea, but we thought, why not? Our ambition is to spread H&M around the globe so if we can get into Korea we think it’s fabulous.

BoF: Are the expensive pieces the most expensive pieces that H&M has ever sold?

V: We also had a dress in the Cavalli collection at the same price point.

A: When we did the collection with Victor & Rolf, we did a bridal dress. I think we did only 1,000 pieces, numbered. And then we continued that with Roberto Cavalli, making a few red carpet dresses that were also numbered. That was highly appreciated by the customers.

So I think people buy into the fact that it’s limited. But a bit more sad, we saw those pieces traded on Ebay a half an hour later. So they become like collector’s items.

BoF: What is the financial relation between H&M and Comme des Garçons?

A: The business model is between the designer and H&M. But for obvious reasons, we take the responsibility for the commercial risk. We have to take that, because we know our territories: which shops to place it in, where to place it, how to display it, etc. That’s something we have sixty years of experience in. But where we don’t interfere is in the design. So we will never control or guide too much of the design, because the creativity is what we are buying. The production and the handling, the more retail side of it, I would say that we are pretty good at that.

So for us it’s basically two brands coming together: H & M COMME des GARÇONS. Theoretically we’re creating a third brand, which is only going to exist from half an hour to a week. That’s the time span of it. The approach that we have is the same as creating a new brand. The packaging, marketing, PR, and distribution have to fit both brands. It has to be win-win, otherwise no designers would do it, except for financial reasons. But the collaborations we have done, obviously the financial is one thing, but I felt that it has been a sincere wish [of the designers] to reach out to a wider audience. I think that has driven the designers to accept our invitation.

BoF: How do you top Rei Kawakubo?

A: That’s something we have to think about on Sunday morning!

But people said that when we worked with Karl Lagerfeld as well. We started with Karl, and it was supposed to be a one-off. But then getting all the feedback from the customers and the sales, everybody loved it. I personally got a letter from a woman who said, I just love H&M because all my life I have dreamed of wearing a piece by Karl and all of a sudden you’ve made it possible.

And then we said, let’s do something completely different, so we went to Stella (McCartney), which is closer to our type of design and our customers. So I think it’s about trying not to think linear, but think different. But keep the same idea. We like expressing the business idea in the product or a collection, instead of a commercial. But it will demand some thinking before signing up the next one.

It was extra fun going from Roberto Cavalli to Comme des Garçons, because it proves our point that fashion is not about one style. Roberto Cavalli’s fashion and Rei Kawakubo’s fashion are just two ways of expressing fashion. So we can keep doing the same business idea of collaboration but then hopefully keep surprising people with choices that are a little bit fun. We like to believe that fashion can be fun, not pretentious.

V: And I think they both attract different customers.

A: From reading what people write on the internet, the customer who queued up for Roberto Cavalli might not the customer who will queue up for this collection. We will attract a totally different customer for this, but the more people we can get to visit H&M and realize that we have something for everyone, the better.

A: Definitely. We are putting more and more emphasis on online, because that’s where our customers are. And secondly, we know that, especially with this collection, people love to look at the collection and make a shopping list. So we put a lot of emphasis there. The commercial and the print ads are more of an image, not showing the product much. They basically drive traffic to the homepage, and on the homepage they’ll see the product and all the stores carrying it.

W. David Marx is a Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of MEKAS. This is an extract of a more in-depth interview which can be found at MEKAS.

TOKYO, Japan – After two years of intense rumours and breathless anticipation, Swedish fast fashion giant H&M finally opened its first Tokyo store on September 13 in the ritzy neighborhood of Ginza, right down the street from competitors Zara and Uniqlo. When the staff cut the ribbon at 11 a.m., somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 Japanese customers (mostly young women) waited in line for their chance to visit the 1,000 square-metre, four-story retail space. Now, twelve days later, the lines continue to stay long, with around 8,000 people visiting the store daily.

An incredible success? Although these long lines may help pay back the reported ¥2 billion launch expenditures, a little perspective is required to know what it all means.

Tokyo’s retail culture is all about lines. Famed donut purveyor Krispy Kreme opened over a year ago, and you still have to wait at least 20 minutes to buy a dozen glazed. There may be a cultural element to the obedient queuing, but the environmental conditions are mostly to blame. The Tokyo-Yokohama area alone is home to 20 million people, and there are at least 40 million in the greater Kanto area. All of these people conceivably come to Tokyo neighbourhoods like Ginza and Harajuku on the weekends to shop. This kind of population congestion means that H&M could achieve these amazing crowds with only a 28% recognition rate amongst Tokyo-area women in their 20s and 30s.

Also, Japan’s mass media have a pack mentality and are always obsessed with the latest retail novelty. While H&M did a good job messaging to a wide selection of Japanese magazines and different taste cultures, the wall-to-wall TV coverage worked to spread the word to more mainstream shoppers. The result was a lot of people out on the street at the right time on Saturday morning, which then created an even better media narrative and brought more people out the next week.

While these long lines tend to stun the foreign press, they actually have little predicting power of bona-fide long-term success. There is a common pattern: a hot brand is packed for months; the brand finally opens more stores; the exclusivity goes away; customers move on to the mass media’s new favorite donut shop or fast fashion brand.

There is no doubt that H&M’s version of “fast fashion” is definitely new to Japan. But, the fashion market here is already so diverse and multi-tiered that it may be like trying to impress calculus students with algebra. Japanese consumers already love a wide range of inexpensive domestic lines that adapt foreign trends to distinct Japanese sub-cultural tastes.

A lot of Japanese critics have stubbornly assumed that H&M will ultimately fail to meet the “high quality demands” of Japanese customers, but H&M is probably no different than the aforementioned domestic labels on this front.

In the end, H&M’s greatest advantage may be its incredibly low prices. Most foreign brands come to Japan and charge more than at home. For example, The Gap in Tokyo is about twice as expensive as it is in the USA. H&M bravely has gone the other direction, aiming to match global pricing. So now H&M is one-half the price of Zara in Japan, thereby making most other Japanese retailers look relatively expensive. If Japanese consumer spending continues to decline, this will play into an even stronger position for H&M.

H&M’s next store will hit the youth district of Harajuku in November. The Ginza location was perhaps too “elegant,” so this should be a better test for the brand to forge a connection with Japan’s critical youth market. The Harajuku opening will correspond with the release of the special Rei Kawakubo collaboration line, sure to bring in a rush of leading-edge consumers.

W. David Marx is a Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of MEKAS. This article is an extract of a more in-depth article on the H&M opening which can be found at MEKAS. Photo by Sean Wood.

TOKYO, Japan and STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Some H&M collaborations of the past (Roberto Cavalli, Viktor & Rolf) were more memorable for the pre-launch buzz and subsequent hysteria around the world than they were for the clothes themselves. So ever since Rei Kawakubo announced her upcoming Comme des Garcons collection for H&M, fashionistas have been wondering whether Kawakubo will bring some of the best of Japanese avant-garde fashion to the masses without diluting her signature style.

Well the wait is almost over. W Magazine wrote about the collaboration in its September issue and on Friday, Fashionista.com posted the first photos of the complete collection. In typical lightening speed, the blogosphere has been passing judgment and at first glance, it seems many CDG fans are underwhelmed by Kawakubo’s efforts, while mainstream customers don’t quite get it.

Over at Cafe Mode, France’s pre-eminent fashion blog (which is now owned by the French daily, L’Express), blogger Geraldine Dormoy says that she will show up on the day the collection debuts, but mostly to see who will actually be buying the clothes. That’s not a ringing endorsement either.

It makes one wonder why Kawakubo decided to do this collaboration at all. It was always going to be tough to translate CDG’s directional, deconstructed aesthetic for mass market tastes. And, since the brand’s many loyal fans are already willing to drop some serious money for a piece of Comme’s coolness and since there are already more accessibly priced Comme des Garcons pieces available for those with tighter budgets, the target market for this collection is unclear.

Could the basis for the collaboration be publicity and brand building? Roberto Cavalli worked with H&M to build brand awareness amongst younger customers and attract private equity investment. Similarly, Viktor & Rolf’s designed for H&M to establish themselves in the high-street fashion consciousness (and they recently parlayed this into an investment from Diesel’s Renzo Rosso). Kawakubo, on the other hand, is notorious for being reclusive and media-shy, and it is unlikely that she is looking for investment (as her business is self-financed and she seems unwilling to pander to private investors).

That leaves the design fee. In addition to the massive PR boost, Stella McCartney reportedly also earned a huge design fee for designing for H&M. Could Kawakubo be looking for some quick cash injection from H&M to maintain her financial independence?

The real answer probably has more to do with Kawakubo’s knack for collaborating with others. She recently unveiled a collaboration with Louis Vuitton, and she has built her own collective of designers under the CDG banner, including Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara.

In any case, it’s all speculation at this stage as to how the collection will perform, but as more and more ‘hi-low’ collaborations are announced and the novelty has begun to wear off, designers should be very clear about the objective of such collaborations, and ensure that the rewards are commensurate with the risks. We’ll see how it all turns out when CDG for H&M his the floors in November.

UPDATE: IMAGES FROM FASHIONISTA.COM REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF LAFORCE+STEVENS ON BEHALF OF H&M.

Photo courtesy of W Magazine.

TOKYO, Japan – The crazy kids in Tokyo’s  Harajuku neighborhood often give outsiders an impression that Japanese fashion trends appear organically on the street without any industry prodding.

In truth, Japanese fashion magazines still retain an uncanny ability to set seasonal styles on a near-mechanical schedule. Due to industry, media, and consumer coordination unlike anywhere else in the world, Japanese trends change on a dime at the beginning of a season, exactly in the ways delineated by magazines.

This system can be awe-inspiring when things go as Japan’s fashion machine intends, but once in a while, the top cannot convince consumers to buy into the template. The most recent example is last year’s push for “American traditional” menswear (a la Thom Browne and Band of Outsiders), which fell flat.

With the glowing coverage of these “neo-trad” brands in the Western media over the last few years, Japanese men’s fashion magazines like Popeye and Men’s Nonno followed the cue and spent the entirety of last autumn advocating American traditional — nicknamed “Ametora” in Japanese.

Magazines were suddenly flush with archival pictures from Ivy League universities in the 1960s, plus photo spreads of cricket sweaters, button-down oxford shirts, bengal stripes, and regimental ties. When spring rolled around, Ametora transformed into seersucker and “cordlaine” suits, boater hats, ribbon belts, and cordovan oxfords with no socks. Popular select shops like United Arrows stocked both autumn and spring based on this aesthetic, hoping for a preppie trickle-down from the high-end segment to the mass youth market.

The streets, however, never really took up American trad en masse. A few wealthy dandies could be seen in Thom Browne and some salarymen picked up shirts and ties at Brooke Brothers Black Fleece, but youth basically avoided any and all permutations on classic Ivy League styles. Even with the famously-inclusive “mixture” layering style of Tokyo, elements of prep style generally did not make it into wardrobes. (Madras check was a notable exception.)

The first barrier for Ametora was the fact that the American brands featured in Japanese magazines as vanguard of the trend — Thom Browne, Band of Outsiders, Adam Kimmel, and 3.1 Phillip Lim— are incredibly expensive in Tokyo thanks to ever-increasing import costs. Already obscenely-priced $50 pairs of athletic socks from Brooks Brothers Black Fleece in the USA somehow become the jaw-dropping ¥15,000 (~$140) in Japan. Contemporary Japanese youth are generally broke and tend to gloss over styles that are impossible to buy.

Pricing is not the whole story, though. There are plenty of American trad knock-offs from Japanese select shops to give kids a cheap way of becoming well-styled clones of 1963 Princeton eating club members.

The core problem with American prep style in Japan is actually more complex, a quirk of the Japanese fashion market’s historical development. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, American and British traditional casual styles — Ivy League and Oxbridge looks — formed the mainstream of Japanese men’s fashion. The wealth and sophistication of the 1980s, however, brought European designer wear (”mode”) to the mix, which provided a dialectic antithesis to the original Ametora. Even when the 1990s moved away from designer lines to casual urban street fashion, preppie was still too grounded as “non-fashion” to ever elicit real attention from hipster youth.

As suggested by this Japanese site, most Japanese youth simply see American trad as “dad fashion.” Stylists and fashion editors may have the confidence to wear re-conceptualized Ivy League styles with a dash of irony, but youth subconsciously see the core elements of the Ametora fashion as too closely resembling the clothes worn by fathers and older salarymen.

(”British Traditional” is the industry-wide keyword for AW 2008, and since “British” calls to mind punk rock, Paul Smith, and aristocracy for most Japanese youth, the industry thinks tweed coats and tartan check have a fighting chance in the mass market.)

The moral of the story is that localisation in foreign markets does not just mean “adapting Western looks to local culture.” Japan now has a relatively long history of importing Western fashion, and so foreign trends not only have to be new and interesting, but also have to avoid reviving “rejected styles” that remain strong in society. The most important prerequisite to revival is that the original style has faded from view. “American Trad” in Japan, unfortunately, has a very shallow grave.

This brings us back to Japanese fashion magazines’ ability to start trends: was the Ametora failure a sign of their waning power? Not exactly. Everyone in the market knew that “American trad” was the proper trend for the season. But consumers decided to avoid it and pick up other micro-trends in its place. No matter how much industry and media coordinate, consumers are still the ultimate arbiters. With no monolithic mega-trends and more fashion diversity, it is easier than ever to say “No.”

By W. David Marx, Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of Mekas. Photos courtesy of the June 2008 issue of HUgE and April 1, 2008 issue of Brutus.

Photos courtesy of Sean Wood/Mekas

TOKYO, Japan – So far, 2008 has been a foreboding year for the European luxury houses in Japan. The sub-prime mortgage crisis has reduced credit lines, rising food prices have decimated discretionary spending, and lower stock prices have convinced the New Rich they aren’t so rich after all.

Although the Japanese super rich seem unfettered, aspirational customers are staying home and saving their meager incomes for an uncertain future. With wages weaker than ever, the average female 25 year-old (in a salary hierarchy based on age, with an exclusive “management track” decided at time of entry to the company) makes barely enough to pay rent let alone make credit card payments for a luxury handbag or designer apparel.

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (”big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam’s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

These fears of luxury decline unfortunately seem stumbling towards reality: At least for the first two quarters of this year, the European Superbrands are experiencing tough times. According to Yomiuiri Online, Hermès Birkin bags — which normally have a two-to-three year wait list — are piling up in stores unsold.

Most brands have resorted to radical steps in order to make up for the hostile economic environment. Chanel had an unprecedented one-month sale in July at its department store in-shops. Salvatore Ferragamo, Gucci, and Bally have all announced price reductions on most products to counterbalance the rising prices of a high Euro and high fuel costs.

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-kei look appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing.

This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (”relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

Select shop Cher’s white-red-and-blue canvas eco bag sold over 70,000 units this year, and they are having to limit its sale to deal with under-supply. Yuru Nachu is like a LOHAS without the political commitment — a passive rejection of wealth culture and conspicuous consumption, but not really the active embrace of Bohemian ethics. Either way, however, the end result has been a move away from bling and traditionally-defined “luxury brands.”

In the past, the national dream of “catching up to the West” worked as a powerful engine fueling luxury sales, but now wider confidence in local culture has made big purchases on imported bags and jewelry less automatic. Japanese young women have not become anti-luxury per se, and surely Tokyo still sports the largest number of luxury handbags of anywhere in the world, but young Japanese women are starting to question how exactly Western luxury brands fit into their new more austere, insular lifestyles.

The brands themselves will have to provide the answer.

W. David Marx is Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of Mekas. 

TOKYO, Japan – “Welcome home.” With those words Jun Morimoto, CEO of Alfred Dunhill in Japan, warmly ushered me into the new Alfred Dunhill flagship in Tokyo’s Ginza district, where it rubs shoulders with the impressive architecture of some of the world’s most famous luxury brands. But all is not rosy in Tokyo’s legendary luxuryland, with reports that sales for some international luxury brands in Japan are down as much as 20% versus last year.

As Morimoto-san showed me around the store, the first of a few Dunhill ‘Home’ flagships which will be opening around the world, he also demonstrated how brands like Dunhill are leading the way in adapting their stores and product offering to meet the evolving expectations of the Japanese luxury customer.

The first floor of the flagship is home to the Tokyo-outpost of Bentleys, the antique shop from London’s Walton Street, where aficionado Tim Bent carefully curates an indulgent collection of Goyard, Louis Vuitton and Hermes antiques. During my visit, many of Tim’s finds, some of which cost upwards of $10,000, seemed to have already been snapped up by customers hungry for a taste of luxury of the early 20th century, when trunks were made to exactly to your liking.

Not to be outdone by the past, the Ginza store also offers Dunhill products not available anywhere else in the world, the most spectacular of which is a made-to-spec traditional Japanese kimono, retailing at ¥1.2m (about $11,000), manufactured using traditional Japanese craftsmanship in the Shiga prefecture near Kyoto.

A couple of night before my visit, Dunhill launched the kimono with much fanfare, creating a veritable frenzy in the Japanese press. But this is no PR gimmick. Every last detail has been thought of, from the 6 available colours that can be traced back to Dunhill’s founding year in 1893 to the subtle D8 signature made of exquisite Japanese paper. The best feature, however, is the selection of several different motifs which are imprinted on the inside of the haori, or hip-length jacket, creating a kind of secret bling for the wearer alone.

The Dunhill flagship, which is home to the only aboveground bar looking out onto Ginza’s bright lights and a barber shop offering indulgent spa treatments, also gives us a taste of what luxury retail environments may feel like in the future as brands strive to build deeper relationships with their customers (and give them more reasons to come into their stores.)

The strategy seems to be working. All three chairs in the barber shop were occupied with just the kinds of young, hip men that brands like Dunhill will need to attract in order to continue their legacy of luxury.

–

The Dunhill “Home” store in Tokyo’s Ginza district.

Bentleys in Dunhill Ginza

The Dunhill Kimono, available only at the Ginza flagship.

Recent articles from The Business of Fashion:

• ICHO | Tailor-made perfection
• Japanese menswear | Packing a stylish punch
• Tokyo | The decline of big-brand luxury
• Qiu Hao and Helen Lee | Diversity in design, comrades in commerce
• Beijing | 24 hours of fashion

TOKYO, Japan - While younger Japanese customers may be veering towards local brands that are in tune with prevailing fashion trends, others are looking for something altogether different. They don’t care about trends. Their closets are already full. They have bought countless branded luxury items over the years. So, if they are going to spend their money on anything, it has to be perfect.

That’s where my favourite Japanese tailor comes in. ICHO is a small, family-run business with a spiritual figurehead and designer in the form of Toru Icho, who was born in 1947 in Kyoto, the historical home of some of Japan’s best luxury artisans. His son, Mits and daughter-in-law Satoko work full-time to translate Toru’s vision into a bonafide business. This is good old-fashioned luxury.

At ICHO, they know each of their clients by name and over the years they have built up a deep understanding of their tastes and preferences. Satoko says that some ICHO customers give them carte blanche to design one-of-kind garments for them, sight unseen.  This reminds me instantly of a conversation I had with Anne-Marie Colban of Charvet, another family-run luxury business focusing on made-to-measure garments.

But ICHO takes things one step further. Everything is tailored to the customer in every way imaginable, not just the designs. Using hundred-year old looms, ICHO weaves fabrics specifically for certain customers. Then, using a small network of craftsmen, ICHO closely directs the production of the clothes, right down to the last tailored detail. They rarely make the same garment twice. 

Of course, this means that ICHO’s prices aren’t cheap. But then again, given the level of quality and experience built into every ICHO garment, they aren’t expensive either and feel like a much better value than what’s on offer around the corner on the main shopping streets of Aoyama.

And, unlike the quiet luxury flagships in Ginza and Omotesando, business is booming at ICHO. One famous Japanese actress has declared she won’t wear anything but ICHO and has a standing order for as many pieces as they can produce. London leather goods designer Bill Amberg also swears by ICHO and even invited Satoko and Mits to stay over at his place on their last trip to London. With each customer, the closeness of the relationship is the same.

A few weeks ago, after a night out with Diane Pernet in London, she closed off the evening mysteriously by saying to me: “By the way, you’ve found your designer.” I asked her what she meant and she pointed to the perfectly fitting, black boiled-cashmere ICHO blazer I was wearing. Diane couldn’t have been more right. ICHO is my designer…but I’m not the only one who can say that.

ICHO video from men.style.com

TOKYO, Japan - “I wanted to start a movement of new generation, young fashion designers in Japan,” Arashi Yanagawa tells me over coffee in Tokyo’s hip Nakameguro neighbourhood. He is speaking of the genesis of John Lawrence Sullivan, the menswear brand he started almost five years ago.

But Arashi hasn’t always been a fashion designer. At first, he followed in his father’s footsteps and spent 13 years in professional boxing. Then, with no fashion training whatsoever, he used his fight money and worked with local pattern cutters to perfect his first collection of two blazers, using vintage garments as a starting point. As a nod to his former life, he named his brand after the 1880’s American bare-knuckle boxer and today, JLS is Japan’s hottest menswear label, known for its slick tailoring and modern accessories.

Despite his non-fashion background, or perhaps because of it, Arashi is at the vanguard of a group of promising, young menswear brands that are taking Tokyo by storm. They offer high quality clothing at prices lower than Lanvin and Thom Browne, but still packing a design punch.

This perfectly meets the expectations of the style-conscious Japanese men that I spoke to. They may not spend as much on fashion as their female counterparts, but they are still conscious of fashion as a canvas for experimental self-expression.

“Men have to be elegant,” declares Arashi. “I am very inspired by British style and Savile Row.” And although, strictly speaking, Ralph Lauren is not British, he has been a reference point for Arashi from the start. Add a little bit of Hedi Slimane’s silhouette, a clever use of colour, and some superb styling by Masumi Sakamoto, and you have JLS.

Down the street from JLS, on the edge of Nakameguro, is the minimalist shop of another notable brand in the Japanese menswear movement. Soe is designed by 31 year old Soichiro Ito, whose line of stylish shirts has been picked up by L’Eclaireur in Paris for the Autumn.

Soichiro has a bit of a nostalgic 80’s vibe to his collection. Colourful, relaxed silhouettes with a twist are the name of the game here. For example, a light blue pinstriped vest with metallic studs for a bit of edge or a crisp white shirt with a bib of interwoven pieces of fabric, creating a relaxed tuxedo effect.

Laid back elegance is also the trademark at N.Hoolywood. And while most of the neighbouring luxury stores in were quiet, a steady stream of shoppers made their way to this shop tucked off of the main Omotesando drag in Aoyama. The entire shop and its contents were imported to Tokyo from the Hollywood Hills by designer Daisuke Obana, whose clothes cleverly bridge the casual-formal divide in a truly unforgettable space.

So the buying equation for the Japanese male shopper is easy. With small production runs, they can be sure not everyone will be sporting the same great style. Plus, there is still money left over for the other important things in the life of the young Japanese male: booze, cars and increasingly, home decor and travel. These guys want it all.

John Lawrence Sullivan by Arashi Yanegawa

Soe by Soichiro Ito

N. Hoolywood at Mister Hollywood by Daisuke Obana

TOKYO, Japan - Once upon a time, for big luxury brands, Japan was the largest and most important market in the world. Japanese customers, young and old, rich and middle-class, would faithfully spend their money on standard Louis Vuitton bags, Hermès scarves and Gucci shoes. These loyal customers could deliver up to 35% of a luxury brand’s global revenue, a reliable cash cow, even while the Japanese economy was sputtering in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.

And so, a formula for luxury brands slowly gelled over the years: build gigantic retail temples of luxury, influence the editorial of powerful magazines that have a grip on the Japanese psyche, and appeal to the innate Japanese desire to fit in and show status.

But, what would the luxury brands do if this tried-and-tested business model stopped working its magic?

Tokyo’s fashion and luxury scene is complex, with hundreds of brands and thousands of stores, in scores of neighbourhoods spread across the city. Lucky for me, I had an excellent guide in the form of W.David Marx whose fashion expertise, cultural insights and Japanese language skills helped me navigate Tokyo’s labyrinthine streets and rapidly changing market landscape.

As we began our tour, it quickly became clear that the major international luxury brands are struggling. The first obvious signs were quiet stores in Ginza and Omotesando, two of Tokyo’s most important luxury neighbourhoods. Chanel. Armani. Dior. Gucci. Prada. For the most part, these massive retail emporia, costing millions of dollars to build and maintain, were empty. 

A purchase I made late in the afternoon at one flagship store was the first purchase of the entire day. Via Busstop, a 5-storey fashion mecca in Shibuya selling Alexander McQueen, Marni and Galliano, was completely devoid of shoppers.

But this is a city of more than 20 million people, in a country that is obsessed with fashion and style. So I asked David, “Where are all the shoppers?”

Teenage women, who ten or fifteen years ago may have been decked out head-to-toe in Chanel or Prada, are shopping at the low-priced Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC) brands in Shibuya 109 , which is a better match for their smaller budgets. While this would have been unthinkable a few years back, it is now de rigueur for young girls to shop at low-priced stores, which deliver better value and perceived individuality.

TGC uses the codes of high fashion and the power of mass media and celebrity to get the word out in massive fashion festivals held twice a year which are open to the public, in addition to buyers and press. Its clothes are marketed as “real” and “accessible” unlike the clothes shown on European high fashion runways which are perceived to be  over-processed and over-priced.

As for the young guys, who are amongst the most well-dressed and stylish you will see anywhere, they are drawn to the vibrant Japanese menswear brands which strike a balance between European trends and a special Japanese flair for colour, cut and layering. Brands like N. Hoolywood,Soe and John Lawrence Sullivan are tucked away in lower-cost locations off the main fashion boulevards or in neighbourhoods like Nakameguro. For their own low-cost options, young Japanese men can by high-quality, sharply-cut suits at Comme Ca Du Mode or trendy clothes at Halb. 

Older, advanced luxury customers, many of whom still have money to spend, are also shunning luxury brands, except for their most expensive and exclusive products. Instead of shelling out $2000 for yet another Gucci bag, they might spoil themselves with a custom-made shirt, dress and trousers from the bespoke tailor ICHO, one of my favourite Japanese brands. ICHO rarely makes more than one of the same garment and designs clothes specifically for their customers, offering a different kind of luxury altogether.  

Economic challenges, present here in Japan as much as they are in other major economies, only explain part of this shift. Over and over again, I’ve heard the same thing during my stay in Tokyo: Japan’s society and cultural fabric are also undergoing a transformation unlike anything seen before. One person told me the Japanese are reversing years of “brain-washing” which led them to believe that their self-worth and social status could only be derived from having the right luxury-branded products.

The Japanese customer has become more clever. There is a strong desire for better value — either delivered by getting good design at lower prices or getting something so special and different that it is worth a splurge. Over the next few posts, I will continue to explore how both local players and international brands are responding to this change and what may happen in the years to come. This is the market to watch for a shift that is emerging  in other advanced luxury markets as well.