Where Ivy League kids liked their clothes a bit ill-fitting and wore them until they were absolutely destroyed, the Japanese kids wore the same garments with much better fits, neater, and cleaner,” says Marx. “The Japanese version of American style, however, is the one today that is globally influential.” When I first read this book, I was troubled by its seeming abundance of blind spots: although it did devote a section of the book to the vintage craze of Harajuku, I was surprised that it didn't mention the Fruits magazine at all. Of course, Harajuku fashion is much more trendy right now during our current Y2k resurgence, but still--I sometimes felt that this book focused too much on individuals who changed the fashion industry, instead of the large swathes of nameless teens from the lower and middle classes who created entirely new styles during the aftermath of Japan's lost decade. At first, this book will seem like it has a really narrow focus and that it might not appeal to people who aren't so interested in Japanese fashion. I do have an interest in fashion, especially denim, which is covered extensively in this book, but this book's appeal was how detailed and all-encompassing it was within its niche. The lessons imparted in this book about how culture travels (especially pre-internet), marketing, and the logistics of international trends, trade, import, and manufacturing, makes this book particularly fascinating and widens the scope of the book past fashion. Published in 1996, Vintage Denim is obviously quite dated. Like Sullivan’s Jeans and From Cowboys to Catwalks, it tells the story of how jeans went from workwear to fashion. But unlike the works of Marx or Sullivan, Vintage Denim doesn’t feel as thoroughly researched. It’s more superficial. In the years after the Second World War, especially during the Vietnam War, a lot of Japanese who liked American pop culture began to question whether they should really indulge in American styles because the American government was up to no good. Over time though, those American styles started to burrow into Japanese culture and now wearing a button-down collar on a shirt does not really say something about America. Ametora has attracted interest in Japan for revealing that so many Americans now think the Japanese do American style better than Americans, but the book has also brought to the surface a lot of buried Japanese cultural history, forgotten even in Japan.

Yet, with an ever-changing, and much more inclusive, fashion world these days, we can’t help but wonder how this grand influence came to be. As Japanese style is now known to be some of the most daring and desirable on the map, how exactly did it get to the point of international domination, with such a complex and seemingly restrictive history? What makes the connection between American and Japanese menswear industries so vital to the history and trajectory of global trends? I think the only part of the book that annoyed me was this comment about Takuya Kimura: “Meanwhile, stylist friends of Nigo repeatedly put A Bathing Ape on the ost popular male idol at the time, SMAP’s Takuya Kimura. // These new Bape celebrity ambassadors – pretty faces with questionable talent who appeared nightly on teenage girls’ favorite variety shows – were a far cry from indie gods Cornelius and James Lavelle.” While Gentleman isn’t on the list of references in Blue Blooded, this book plays a pivotal role for my work and motivation to write the book, which is why it deserves an honourable mention. In all, both men “changed the face of fashion in their own ways”. While Hiroshi Fujiwara brought the underground to mainstream, Japanese culture, putting Japan on the international map of cultural elites, Nigo introduced Americans to the idea of quality, top-dollar, Japanese-made, American style. Through this, Japan became a cultural epicenter, one that cultural leaders around the world could no longer ignore. The book itself is designed fashionably. The blue on the inside cover is likely Okayama trademark denim blue. There are no typos and grammatical errors - Marx executes to Japanese quality.

Based on firsthand research, Jeans of the Old West uncovers a chapter of denim’s history that previously had been sort of left in the dark; the years when Levi’s was the only jeans maker who could use rivets in ‘the old west.’ In the book, I implicitly argue though that this really starts and centres on American styles. British looks have had their moments in Japan (mostly as a reaction against American looks), and probably inform the basic business look of Japan, but the core of Japanese menswear is Ivy-inspired. Decades after the war, many of these items like denim jeans, found its way to marketplaces frequented by Japanese Youth who were influenced by American style through Western Movies and exposure to the collegiate Ivy League style in the late 1950s and 60s. Japanese teenagers spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, money, and energy in pursuit of fashionable clothing, especially when compared to their global peers. America, with a population 2.5 times larger than Japan, has fewer than ten magazines focusing on men's style. Japan has more than 50.

I also appreciated the parts about how the constant fashion changes led to clashes with the establishment, including police performing mass arrests of fashionable students hanging out in Ginza. As one aggrieved student said in the Asahi Shimbun: What's wrong with wearing cool clothing and walking through Ginza? Were not like those country bumpkins around Ikebukuro or Shinjuku.There were even hippies in Japan! With all the other copying of America that Japan did I shouldn't be surprised, but somehow I was. After the Second World War a majority of the Japanese wanted nothing to do with the militaristic ‘Japanese’ culture that emerged during wartime. In the case of fashion, there was nothing really ‘Japanese’ for men in the post-war era to start with. Adult men wore really boxy, vaguely-British style suits with no glamour. American youth style did not appear and replace Japanese style. It replaced nothing. I'm going to do that thing I do--I'm glad I lived in Japan in the later 00s, because I got to see Ura-Harajuku in the post-2000 heyday. I've been to the A Bathing Ape store, wandered through a bunch of the vintage shops, and watched all the people dressed with more style than I had realized was possible.Traditionally, the Ametora style was very Ivy League. In 1965, Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida published a now-cult photobook called Take Ivy, which documented the way students dressed at Ivy League universities in the US. It influenced Japanese baby boomers, who adopted the style for themselves. Denimhunters is a knowledge portal for denim enthusiasts and newcomers. Launched in 2011 as a pioneering denim blog, we’re a trustworthy source of denim knowledge and advice. In the Summer of 1964, Tokyo prepared to host thousands of foreign guests for the Olympic Games. Planners hoped to reveal a futuristic city reborn from the ashes of World War II, complete with sprawling highways, modernist stadium complexes, and elegant Western restaurants. As old-fashioned trolley cars disappeared from the streets, a sleek monorail debuted to whisk tourists into the city from Haneda Airport. Of course, Fruits magazine fashion is not really an example of Ametora, which is the book's focus. In that regard, it does a great job of emphasizing the enduring relevance of Ivy fashion (in particular), as well as other trends. This book is very focused, which is great--and perhaps this is better than any of the philosophical routes that this book could have taken. In particular, I would have been interested in how America's past and current fascination with Japanese clothing is related to Asiaticism (as opposed to the more past-directed Orientalism), which also manifested in art in movies such as Blade Runner, which warned of a Asian-dominated dystopic future, and the successful globalization of anime.

But Japan’s love of Americana is well-documented—and taken alone, does not constitute a special relationship. The turning point between the two, however, occured in the ‘90s. By then, Japanese Americana brands had become as good as—if not better than—their American counterparts. More importantly, though, there was a nascent subversive subculture emerging in Tokyo. Ura-Harajuku, in particular, became an epicentre of Japan’s streetwear scene. It was there that the foundations for brands like A Bathing Ape, WTAPS, Undercover, GOODENOUGH, Hysteric Glamour, Cav Empt and Head Porter were laid. Other creatives, like Sasquatchfabrix’s designer Daisuke Yokoyama, were launching freepapers, manifestos of sort for graffiti and post-punk subcultures that were inspired by what was happening in America. While buoyed by a vibrant creative scene in Tokyo and predominantly inspired by local subcultures, most of the aforementioned brands considered elements of Americana crucial to their overall aesthetic, whether they be military garb (WTAPS), motorcycle culture (Neighborhood) or punk (Undercover). Downey now works as a historical and archival consultant. In 2016, she also had a book about Levi Strauss (the man) published, which you can get here. I found this book from the Articles of Interest series on American Ivy/Preppy style and immediately borrowed it because it sounds very cool. And I was pleased to find that while this book also talks about a lot of the events that the podcast does, it also goes into detail on subcultures not mentioned in the podcast. There are two questions here – why did American and British styles come to Japan and then why did Japanese youth adopt them? In Ametora, I show that the growth of Western fashion in Japan was not exactly organic – brands made a very conscious effort to import the latest in American and British youth styles as a business venture. And then once the styles caught on, mostly with help from the consumer media, there was an entire industrial-media complex looking for the latest in Western trends and offering versions to young people, whether domestically made or imported.A renowned academic and true indigo expert, Balfour-Paul is coming up on three decades of practical experience with indigo plants and dyeing, and she’s been living and working in the Middle East and North Africa researching the magic blue dyestuff. Doing skate right isn’t about being first outside Palace any more. For one, all those logos are starting to feel a bit inauthentic. Instead, look to older heads, like Brendon Babenzien, who left his gig as creative director of Supreme to found Noah, which features loose tailoring alongside its logo hoodies and Aprix, which does smart-ish skate shoes. Fellow New York brand Aimé Leon Dore also does a neat spin on grown-up streetwear – think rugby shirts and cable-knit cardigans – while Awake NY has you covered for legal-drinking-age takes on graphic prints. Many movies, though I sometimes wonder if Hollywood is just amplifying these cultures that are already established--in a sense, it might not be very creative. At the end of the book, I make the point that the whole menswear-blog scene of seven or eight years ago started because the whole culture of dressing up has sort of disappeared for American men. So young guys couldn’t just go to their dad and ask, “What’s the best suit to buy?” because their dads don’t know. So they had to start from basics the same way Japanese men did in the 1960s.

I'm not reading the entire book because I'm not that interested in fashion. I got this from the library because it is literally THE ONLY book my system had on modern Japanese culture. How is that?Published in the autumn of 2015, Ametora completely uncovers why jeans became so popular in Japan, and ‘how Japan saved American style’ (which is the book’s subtitle). With an almost archaeological approach, the American author and journalist, W. David Marx (who speaks Japanese), spent two years researching this book, and another two years writing it. These cleanup efforts proceeded steadily until August, when the switchboards at Tsukiji Police Station began lighting up with frantic phone calls. Ginza shop owners reported an infestation on the main promenade, Miyuki-dori, requiring immediate assistance from law enforcement: There were hundreds of Japanese teenagers hanging around in strange clothing ! It was fascinating! I have to admit that I was a bit confused when I saw the photos of the clothes because it just looks like a regular outfit but I guess that’s the beauty of Ametora – it’s become so prevalent it’s practically the default style for many people. Plus, the book basically ends at Uniqlo, which is the default outfit for most guys in Singapore so I shouldn’t be surprised that even the older outfits look familiar to me. I got the idea for Blue Blooded in February 2015 while I was on my way to our annual skiing holiday in the Italian Alps with my family. The day before we left, my mother-in-law had gifted me the Danish version of Bernhard Roetzel’s book, Gentleman, which covers everything you need to know about gentlemen’s attire. Reading it while we were cruising through Germany, I decided I wanted to write a book about denim!