made in japan

By some sort of accident I found this book at a thrift store for $4 containing information about some of my favourite Japanese designers including Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, her protege Junya Watanabe, mainline Issey Miyake as well as Pleats Please and Yōji Yamamoto. I was pretty much speechless that I found something so relevant to my interests and containing a wealth of information in the suburbs of south eastern Melbourne. More importantly the book's preface put the historical nature of Japanese clothing to better understand and contextualize its origins. Importantly it looks at the ways in which the brands advertised, how they conducted their runway shows (with pictures you won't find on style.com) and the way in which people interact with the brands. It's always more interesting to me when people wear their archive pieces, rather than passing their pieces along in order to wear current season.

While you could read it from cover to cover the book isn't quite structured to give the same satisfaction or indeed organisation. Instead it's something that would happily live on a coffee table to entertain guests or spark a conversation. This particular version has also been translated into Dutch and artfully balances the visual nature of these clothes while reinforcing their intellectual content. The above photographs are merely a selection of what I found to be most enjoyable but I suppose there are aspects which it did not include which I'd love to uncover. It echoes this sentiment of 'cool having a certain mystery to it' (thanks Chloë Sevigny). While that's something which I cannot personally live by, I love reading and gaining insight into different things especially when I cannot discuss the subject matter in day to day life. It's a handy little book to hand so if you do come across it in a pokey little book store and you have a love of Japanese designers I implore you to invest in it- you won't be disappointed!

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