Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion

Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Sydney in association with National Art School Gallery Sydney

Contents

Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in association with National Art School Gallery

13 17

Gene Sherman Katie Dyer

Preface

21

Yoko Takagi

Creative Independents in Tokyo

Toby Slade

45 ANREALAGE 61 mintdesigns 77 SASQUATCHfabrix 93 Theatre Products 105 writtenafterwards 25

–

20 June 17 August 2013 SCAF Project 18

125 126

Acknowledgements Contributors

Duelling Beauties in Japanese Fashion: The Deep Roots of a New Era

Preface Gene Sherman Chairman and Executive Director Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Fashion is currently seen as one of many cultural practices – including cuisine, literature, language, film, visual arts and architecture to name the most obvious – that are recognised as revealing society’s mores and morals at any given historical moment. It is a subject open to serious analysis as ‘visual practice’, the twenty-first century umbrella term that has replaced ‘fine arts’ in museums and academies the world over.

It could be argued that the advent of structural analysis opened the door to fashion being recognised as a significant system of signs rather than a series of frivolous frocks destined for market consumption. Ferdinand de Saussure’s introduction to structural linguistics as a methodology, published posthumously in 1916, was later re-imagined by anthropologist Claude LéviStrauss. Related theories were subsequently explored most effectively by a host of top-tier, mainly French, intellectuals, among whom the philosophers Roland Barthes (semiotics, post-structuralism) and Jacques Lacan (structural psychology) were perhaps the most influential. Importantly, the linguistic model was adapted and extended to enable the analysis of broad cultural phenomena. Fashion entered the picture as a relevant signifier, among others, and has found at last a serious role within the framework of art world and cultural practice. What one wears outside and inside the home, at work and at leisure, for celebratory, sporting or spiritual events, during adolescence and into adulthood reveals as much about one’s status, financial background, ethical beliefs and attitude to the world as how one sources, prepares, presents and consumes food.

Connectivity between the functional applied arts and what was seen as non-utilitarian ‘high art’ has been fashionable, de rigueur even, at various times in material cultural history. The nineteenth century Pre-Raphaelites, under William Morris’s creative/commercial management, reached out to the applied arts. Interiors comprising paintings, Edward Burne-Jones stained glass windows, decorated furniture, wall friezes and variously scaled paintings were sought after by well-off, up-to-the-minute families.

13

The early twentieth century Wiener Werkstätte movement embarked on a similar trajectory. Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser and Gustav Klimt designed furniture, interiors and even functional household objects in addition to creating paintings and sculpture along more traditional lines.

Modernism favoured an elite utopian creative zone, in which artists worked intensely within sealed-off communities. In the forties and fifties these enclaves were often disdainful of the market. Later, in the sixties, the pop movement embraced and transformed the world of advertising. Images from billboards and product enticements found their way onto the walls of serious commercial galleries, such as New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery, and found permanent homes in major private collections and the great museums of the western world.1 In this second decade of the twenty-first century, the applied arts are again interlocking with studio-based contemporary art practice. Fashion has become fashionable within the burgeoning global contemporary art scene.

My interest in fashion began very early on and in a more down-toearth, prosaic manner. My maternal grandmother, Gita, had lost two husbands before my mother Miriam, third in line of four girls, reached puberty. Gita raised her daughters modestly but ably on the proceeds of pattern- and garmentmaking. Once married, the four sisters hosted and spoiled their beloved mother on a three-month rotational basis. When our family’s turn came along I was excitedly prepared: a carefully stored basket of fabrics, ideas and pre-loved clothes awaited her arrival. She would alter, make from scratch, or recreate my imagined wardrobe.

Many years later in 1985, when my family’s nine-year sojourn in Australia finally felt secure and the future felt both challenging and full of promise, I discovered quite by accident a small Double Bay store that stocked exceptional fashion: wearable but with attitude, stylish but needing little care, monochromatic, sculptural in shape, sombre, serious and totally original. Little did I know at the time that I was beginning a fashion collection and that at least two of my admired designers were on the cusp of a pioneering career that would bring them international fame as significant artists. I had found Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and the already influential Issey Miyake. My interest in fashion soared.

Many years of collecting the work of this triumvirate – giants of late twentieth century design – led me to establish a disciplined methodology and a structured collecting practice. A garment acquired meant a garment retired. Our Paddington terrace attic slowly filled with human-sized archival boxes whose contents, once photographed and nestled into acid-free tissue paper, never again rejoined my forty skirt/jacket wardrobe. Finally, in 2009, approximately one hundred items by the aforementioned designers were donated to Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and shown there and at New South Wales’ Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery.

14

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established in 2008 with the aim of focusing on visual practice in its varied manifestations. To date, seventeen practitioners, collectives or curators have produced new work or, in a few cases, shown older, renowned pieces never seen in our part of the world. The artists have included, among others, Yang Fudong, Jonathan Jones, Jitish Kallat, Janet Laurence, Dinh Q. Lê and Ai Weiwei (before he gained his current celebrity/activist status). Architecture has also featured via the work of the Japanese duo SANAA, Andrew Burns and, indirectly, through Tokujin Yoshioka’s snowy interior installation framing his Waterfall benches. From this year the architecture focus has intensified with Fugitive Structures, a fouryear competitive architectural pavilion project. The inaugural project, Crescent House, has been designed by Andrew Burns.

All exhibitions have been accompanied by a diverse Culture+Ideas programme tailored specifically for young children, tertiary students, art world professionals and interested adults.

Fashion has long been waiting in the wings. An installation by Hussein Chalayan was mooted and eventually set aside. A reluctance to travel long distances on his part, financial considerations and other practicalities felt inauspicious and problematic. A trip to Tokyo Fashion Week in March 2010 yielded meagre results and a void developed around this much sought after aspect of visual and social practice.

Finally, and quite by surprise, a solution presented itself. Several emails arrived from Tokyo in quick succession: SCAF Advisory Board members Tomoko and Akira Nakayama and, separately, our dear friend and long-time Japan guru Johnnie Walker sent information about Feel & Think, a fashion exhibition with a difference, on show at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery.

Tomoko’s accomplished written review of the show upon her return to Australia confirmed my decision to see the exhibition for myself. She wrote: ‘These highly educated designers are a new breed of creators who not only link their design to contemporary culture such as music and art, but also critically reflect in their designs the reality of Tokyo as an intensely lived megacity.’2 The designers’ conceptual thinking was centre stage in the guise of highly original artworks speaking of the ten brands’ preoccupations and predilections. Frocks and runway show screen presentations were shown but backgrounded. A highly focused, intense working weekend in Tokyo sealed my thinking. The show was clearly too large for our space and too scattered for my eye. And yet…

The resulting project is a new version of Feel & Think. Five brands are on exhibition, another five are glimpsed on screen. LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) architect Chris Bosse designed dual spaces with flair: at SCAF and at the National Art School, Sydney. The University of Technology, Sydney, soon joined as the third partner. Under the creative and able direction

15

of fashion lecturer, Armando Chant, from the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, senior fashion students will work with Feel & Think Japanese designers and mentors to create a compelling collection to be shown later at SCAF in an orchestrated fashion/art event.

Feel & Think stands as a collaborative venture, with SCAF, the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Bunka Gakuen University, the National Art School and the University of Technology, Sydney, combining strengths to create an original cross-cultural event.

I acknowledge and thank wholeheartedly the following people: Anna Waldmann, who originally accompanied me to Tokyo Fashion Week and with whom, despite our initial disappointment, I learned a huge amount and glimpsed new horizons in the exhibition potential of work seen on the runways; Stéphane Perl, from Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, whose generosity and detailed expert guidance of the museum’s beautifully installed Hussein Chalayan show extended exponentially my knowledge of Chalayan’s work; Dolla Merrillees, SCAF’s Associate Director who followed my rushed trip to Tokyo with a second visit so as to meet with the curators and designers; Yoko Takagi, Bunka Gakuen University professor and the exhibition’s curator, whose research skills, lecturing and curatorial strengths helped shape the creative producers that are the brands; Motoaki Hori, Director of the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, who was kind enough to come into work on a Sunday in order to meet me during my super-speedy, pre-Christmas, twenty-four hour visit; Katie Dyer, the National Art School Gallery Curator who impressed us all with her imaginative and speedy embrace of the exhibition and her disciplined approach to the management of a relatively large-scale show; Toby Slade, Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, who has written a fascinating and informative catalogue essay on the fashion-focused cultural history of Japanese aesthetics; Armando Chant, University of Technology, Sydney, who embraced the exhibition instantaneously and has engaged his students with imaginative flair; and Johnnie Walker, who went far beyond the call of duty in shepherding our team around the complex city that is Tokyo.

My sincere thanks to the Nelson Meers Foundation for its ongoing support of our Culture+Ideas programme and to the Japan Foundation for its generous support of this exhibition.

Finally, my deep love and eternal gratitude goes to Brian Sherman whose unstoppable support of my work and life goals has been constant and generous over forty-five years of marriage.

1.

2.

16

Pop art has endured and remains popular with museum and gallery visitors.

The exhibition Lichtenstein: A Retrospective was shown at the Tate Modern, London, 21 February – 27 May 2013.

Personal correspondence with the author, December 2011.

Katie Dyer Curator and Gallery Manager National Art School

In recognition of the groundbreaking creative explorations of Japanese fashion and the incredibly fertile exchange between Japanese and western culture, the National Art School and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) present Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion. The exhibition showcases artists and designers who have taken Tokyo by storm, breaking down conventional definitions of fashion.

The National Art School Gallery is dedicated to making local connections based on current global dialogues about contemporary culture and ideas. We are delighted to be partnering once again with SCAF to present an innovative programme that emphasises the commitment our organisations have to education and the value of art and culture in our society.

Considering fashion to be a cultural phenomenon, Feel & Think presents new approaches to fashion design as seen in the conceptual and multidisciplinary practices embraced by a number of Japanese designers in these early years of the twenty-first century. This project is focused on Tokyo’s mesmerising fascination with fashion and aesthetics. It proposes that fashion functions not as a seasonal ‘trend’ but as an independent, creative, contemporary language that imagines the future and reflects the social, political and economic concerns of our times.

Embarking on an exhibition of avant-garde fashion from Tokyo may initially seem an unlikely subject for the National Art School Gallery. It was Dr Gene Sherman who suggested this as the framework for the second in our series of collaborations with SCAF. The idea immediately captured our imaginations not only because of the many shared debates within the discourse around art, fashion and design, but also because of the substantial impact the National Art School has had on the intersection between art and fashion since it was established on the historic site of the old Darlinghurst Gaol in 1922.

It appears that the first fashion course taught at East Sydney Technical College (when the National Art School was a part of this larger institution) was titled Women’s Handicrafts, a telling indication of the gender

17

bias of the time. It was an extensive course in designing and cutting, textiles, the history of costume, workroom management, freehand drawing and bookkeeping. A range of art and design subjects was also offered as the study of design and sketching were considered invaluable. The name of the Women’s Handicraft course was only changed to Fashion in 1963. A small selection from the National Art School archives is presented in the National Art School Gallery during Feel & Think to illustrate these connections to the past.

By 2005 the design and fashion departments, along with other ‘technical’ departments, had moved to new locations. Until that time the National Art School afforded close proximity and ongoing exchange between the students and faculty from the art and fashion departments, producing innovative cross-disciplinary approaches that have had a lasting influence on Australian art and design. Early records show that in 1947 National Art School teachers and alumni such as James Gleeson and Frank Hinder collaborated with the Silk and Textile Printers company on a project intended to invigorate Australian textile design. Fashion legend from the late 1970s and 1980s, Katie Pye, originally completed a Diploma of Art in painting at the National Art School.

Creating what she called ‘wearable images’, she found an audience for her iconoclastic approach to artistic concepts, design and process. There are many other significant examples of artists and designers who have emerged from this environment, such as Akira Isogawa and Romance Was Born; unfortunately, there is not the space to recount them here. In the light of this history, the exhibition allows viewers to immerse themselves in the Tokyo designers' vibrant, challenging and pioneering approach to fashion.

Many people and organisations were instrumental in bringing this exhibition together. In the first instance, the National Art School is extremely grateful to SCAF for its vision and great collaborative spirit.

In particular, we acknowledge Dr Gene Sherman for her support, Dolla Merrillees and Michael Moran.

We sincerely thank the creators of the work: ANREALAGE, mintdesigns, SASQUATCHfabrix, Theatre Products and writtenafterwards.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue received a generous grant from the Japan Foundation and we express our most sincere thanks for its support. The National Art School would also like to thank LAVA for its inspiring exhibition design and the University of Technology, Sydney for its creative educational programmes. Finally, I would like to thank the dedicated staff of the National Art School for their engagement with the gallery programmes and to acknowledge the ongoing support of the National Art School’s Board of Directors.

18

Creative Independents in Tokyo Yoko Takagi Professor, Bunka Fashion Research Institute Bunka Gakuen University, Tokyo

The world of fashion has undergone drastic change since the beginning of the twenty-first century. High fashion transmitted from the catwalks of Paris, New York and Milan has lost its once centripetal force. Instead, global street styles and fast fashion exercise considerable influence on our relationship with clothes. Equally, heightened awareness of environmental issues and sustainable ways of living are greatly affecting our wardrobe choices.

We live in an era in which information is shared simultaneously and globally on the internet. In the fashion industry, globalisation has affected product planning, manufacturing and the distribution and consumption of goods. At the same time, we are witnessing the gradual fading of distinctive regional aesthetics based on local histories and heritages.

In this rapidly changing context, Hiroshi Narumi, Mariko Nishitani, Motoaki Hori and I, all from the Bunka Fashion Research Institute, began to reconsider the meaning of fashion in Tokyo from our different perspectives: sociology, fashion editions, museum curation and art history, respectively.

This was the starting point for the exhibition Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and Kobe Fashion Museum in 2011–12.

Japan’s sophisticated kimono culture has a long history. All kimonos have a fixed flat form and the same two-dimensional construction for both sexes and all ages. Various surface decorations are applied through weaving, dyeing and embroidery. Historically, these surface decorations often expressed themes such as dramatic changes in seasons, as well as visual motifs based on classical poems and stories reflecting the wearer's literary connoisseurship.

In the latter years of the Edo period (c. 1603–1868) decorations on kimonos reflected certain aesthetic sensibilities that were popular among common people, such as iki (chic) and shibumi (cool). People came up with their own styles of wearing kimonos by layering and matching obis (sashes) and accessories. Extravagant combinations became trendy once they were recognised as iki. In the past, ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) acted as the medium

21

for disseminating the latest trends in kimono patterns and the smartest ways of dressing and tying an obi. With wider publication of the latest trends in kimono pattern books on woodblock, the Edo public enjoyed fashion from as early as the seventeenth century.

The art of wearing a kimono is about following flexible rules and being playful and inventive in coordinating various elements. In a way, it is similar to the idea of mixing and matching tools and utensils in the tea ceremony or the artful presentation of kaiseki dishes in Japanese cuisine. In the late nineteenth century, when Japan opened up the country after almost three centuries of national isolation, the West discovered the beauty of kimono culture. It became one of the vehicles that gave birth to the arts and crafts movement and art nouveau. The pioneer haute couture designer Charles Frederick Worth, and later Madeleine Vionnet, adopted certain characteristics from kimonos in their designs for dresses, such as asymmetrical decorations, flat construction and oversized sleeves.

The next wave of Japanese influence on western fashion was initiated by a generation of creative Japanese fashion designers in the 1980s: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.

During this postmodern era, designers from Tokyo challenged the status quo of the fashion industry centred in Paris, and Tokyo became one of the major international capitals of fashion.

Japanese people first started wearing western-style clothing in the middle of the nineteenth century but it has been only thirty or forty years since they left their kimono culture behind and adopted western fashion as their regular wardrobe. Since then, they have quickly integrated it into their cultural repertoire and made it their own.

Despite Japan’s rich fashion history, in recent years, business and marketing strategies seem to have taken precedence over creativity. Since 1990, a number of socioeconomic factors has shifted the fundamental values of fashion in Japan: the burst of the Japanese economic bubble in 1993; the rise of low-priced fast fashion such as UNIQLO, Zara, H&M, Topshop and Forever 21; western luxury brands opening new flagship stores in Japan; the launch of the Tokyo Girls Collection (with its direct mobile shopping feature); and the financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

For Japanese designers it has become increasingly difficult to design clothing based on naive aspirations such as 'coming up with beautiful, cool design' or 'creating a new trend'. Creative-minded designers have had few resources and little support from their government and non-profit organisations. These designers have been forced to find resources for their artistic pursuits on their own.

Creativity in fashion design cannot be based on practicality and affordability. Rather, the creativity lies within the possibility of initiating a

22

dialogue between the designer and the wearer and the emotional experience that fashion can deliver.

In this exhibition, we have highlighted designers who have taken an independent stance in their creative endeavours. We selected the participating brands (ten in the original exhibition, five here at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the National Art School) according to the following criteria: •

• • •

The brand should be financially independent. Designers should be involved in the entire process, ranging from design and production to management, sales and public relations.

The concept for the brand should be clear and its creations should be original.

The brand should operate and directly manage a retail store.

The brand's activities should show its diverse interests in art, design, music and other cultural aspects outside of fashion.

Financial success and the size of the organisation were not considered.

This exhibition is unprecedented in the way that the five participating groups of designers, all based in Tokyo, attempt to answer the essential question: what is fashion? ANREALAGE, mintdesigns, SASQUATCHfabrix, Theatre Products and writtenafterwards stand apart from the conventional framework of the fashion industry through their independent construction and selling of their creations. While the careers and philosophies of the individual designers vary, they share a keen awareness of society’s contemporary issues and they explore their own realities for the new era. We hope that visitors to this exhibition will rediscover fashion’s diversity and be captivated by its new allures.

Our sincerest thanks to all the participating designers and the individuals involved in realising this exhibition.

23

Duelling Beauties in Japanese Fashion: The Deep Roots of a New Era Toby Slade Associate Professor College of Arts and Sciences University of Tokyo

Japan's fashions are a source of constant and endless fascination.

Their variety, complexity, perfection and rapid overturning are the product of one of the most sophisticated and complex cultures on earth. They are unified and explained with one adjective: 'Japanese'. Hugely divergent, they are the product of an ongoing struggle between the traditional and the modern, the foreign and the indigenous, the sublime catwalk and the pulsating street. The story of Japanese fashion has perhaps more twists and turns in its chapters than other fashion stories: the near complete self-imposed isolation of the Edo period (1603–1868), the sudden shock of re-engagement with the world, rapid modernisation, flapperage Tokyo, the great Kanto earthquake, the building of an Asian empire, the descent into fascism and nuclear defeat in the Second World War, the occupation, the post-war economic miracle (which led Japan to becoming an economic and technological superpower), the excesses of the economic bubble, and the lost decades that followed. It has been a bumpy but never-boring journey.

The tale of the Japanese designers of genius who wowed Paris and carved their names among fashion's greatest is well known, as is the story of the Japanese street fashions that exploded with subcultural variety and creativity. Less well known are the details of what happened in the era since the golden age when Japanese designers ruled the Paris catwalks.

While Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion tells part of that story, it is hoped that this essay will provide some insight into the conflicts and contradictions that run deep in the history of Japanese aesthetics and are still playing themselves out in the fashions here displayed.

Early globalisation In 1615 a Japanese ambassador met with Pope Paul V in Rome, the same year Galileo faced the inquisition for his heretical geocentricism. Spanish transPacific voyages had become common, with Spanish silver from Mexico being traded through the Philippines then used for trade in Japan. Spanish profits and Spain’s associated influence, along with the new technological ability to travel relatively

25

easily throughout Asia, also saw the beginning of Christian missions to Japan, with the Jesuits evangelising there from 1549. This was the beginning of the process we now call globalisation; the flow of people, goods and information at ever-increasing speeds around the world. The Japanese had the latest technology in firearms and had built the ocean-going galleon that had transferred the ambassador to Rome.

There is a portrait of him by Claude Deruet in Rome’s Borghese Gallery, in which his clothing, except for a few obviously Japanese elements, such as his samurai swords, does not look as if it would have been very different from that worn by the Pope and the other dignitaries he was meeting. European Renaissance clothing was marked by voluminous layers, contrasting fabrics, embroidery and surface ornamentation. It is easy to imagine that if regular contact had continued the clothing histories of both Europe and Japan would have been much less divergent.

One of the key elements of the European Renaissance was the rediscovery of the classical aesthetics of ancient Greek and Roman humanism.

The human body was seen as the source of beauty, with temples, buildings and artworks based on human proportion and symmetry, something that medieval thought and gothic art had strenuously denied. The implications for clothing are significant: the human body is either something shameful and ugly to be wrapped and hidden or it is something beautiful to be shown and accentuated with tailored clothing. Although the real age of tailoring did not start until after the French Revolution – with the rise of early capitalism in Holland and English devolution leading to a wealthy gentry living in the countryside – the seeds of that basic idea began in the Renaissance. Breeches, defined waistlines, tighter sleeves and narrower silhouettes all moved clothing away from flowing robe-type garments that wrapped the body to clothing that, more and more, showed the body’s form.

Cultural isolation In 1615 Japan was not very different from much of Europe in terms of its economic development, literacy and feudal political structure. However, from around 1633 Japan chose to seclude itself from the world, a political decision that still has cultural ramifications for Japan and its fashions today. The sakoku, or isolation period, was one of extraordinary cultural development, much of it somewhat oblivious to the rest of the world. It is known as the Edo period not just because the military leaders, or shogun, established themselves in Edo, today's Tokyo, but because a government policy turned the fishing village into the largest city in the world. The official and imperial capital remained in Kyoto with the figurehead Emperor and the court; however, one of the shogun's most influential reforms was the policy of alternate attendance, or sankin-kõtai, requiring the regional lords to maintain a household in Edo, living there alternate years and keeping family members there when not personally in residence.

In some ways the policies worked together to make Japan the particularly unique country it remains today. Seclusion meant that all foreign

26

contact ceased. Over the period in which Europe and America saw the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, Japan's cultural influences were almost entirely internal, evolving in different directions from the rest of the world. A small Dutch trading outpost was maintained in Nagasaki, so some goods and information were exchanged. The blackout was not absolute, but it was dark enough for most of Japan to never need to consider the rest of the world.

The alternate attendance policy brought a long period of peace and prosperity, fulfilling its original purpose to concentrate the samurai in one city such that they did not fight among themselves or with the shogun. Its greater influence, although not its original purpose, was to centralise the country’s wealth and information sources. It also created the largest city in the world, with over a million residents by 1721, far larger than any city in Europe at the time. Roads were built and the inn culture required for all those trips to and from Edo was created. The availability of goods was centralised and there was rapid growth in theatre, sports like sumo, and the woodblock printing industry for newspapers and art. Unprecedented economic activity was generated, knitting the country tightly together. The samurai, unable to wage wars against each other, began to compete through their cultural refinement and their fashions.

The Edo period was clearly a sophisticated time in Japan; however, sumptuary laws restricted any expression of fashion outside the rules of one's class. Fabrics, colours and general expressions of wealth were restricted. The kimono developed into a very efficient and profoundly beautiful garment and it was the centre of the fashion system. In many ways it was more modern than the European clothing of the time. Due to its flat construction, made from one piece of cloth, there was no waste. It could be dried flat and did not require pressing or ironing. A singular design meant that most women knew how to sew and repair one. Size could be adjusted with folds and the wrapping structure meant that variations in the height and weight of the wearer did not matter. As a result, valuable kimonos could be passed down from generation to generation and a huge second-hand market existed. Kimonos were advertised and famous kabuki actors facilitated product placement of the latest styles in fabric design and accessories. Ingenious inventions like yuzen dyeing meant a fabulous variety of designs and subtly of expression. Within all these elements there was great creative potential and yet changes to the essential form or style of the kimono, which could indicate social mobility between classes, were viewed more conservatively. Perhaps this was a reflection of the conservatism of a nation that had chosen seclusion. Despite an endless variety of detail, radical fashion transformation was feared.

In 1853 all this began to change. American warships arrived in Japan and demanded that it be opened to trade. Japan, alarmed at the vast martial superiority of the Americans, feared domination by the foreigners and the terminating crisis of Edo Japan began. It culminated in 1868 with the victory of

27

reformers who wished to modernise Japan rapidly. They restored the Emperor to absolute sovereignty, made him the personification of modernisation, and centralised him in the Shinto religion as a means to unify the nation and resist Christianity. Japan abolished the feudal class system and all sumptuary laws.

It is said that there was an explosion of colour as foreign dyes swept across the country. Women started to look ‘soft’ from a distance as fabric restrictions disappeared and hemps and worsteds were replaced with silks and cottons.

For all the discussion of foreign-influenced clothing changes, it is important to remember that for the vast majority of Japanese the major fashion trend throughout the nineteenth century and up to the Second World War was not so much a ‘westernisation‘ of tastes as a ‘samuraisation’ of tastes, as the bulk of the population adopted the styles and aesthetics previously reserved for a small elite. Only a minority had the capacity to wear foreign clothing, although it was these people who constituted a new elite and dominated the public imagination with regard to clothing, fashions and self-presentation.

A Japanese aesthetic - when trying to The early twentieth century writer, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, define the ways in which Japanese aesthetics were refined throughout the quiet isolation of the Edo period and differed from European and American aesthetics, wrote a book called In Praise of Shadows (originally published in 1933). Through the central metaphor of shadows, Tanizaki argues that Japanese aesthetics find beauty in ambiguity, mystery and the seduction of something partly hidden from view: the shadow cast by a sloping temple roof, the screened and panelled interior in which everything is hidden in its place, the way a body is wrapped by the folds of a kimono. Much has also been written about the way Japanese poetry uses the ambiguity of the Japanese language to create multiple meanings and possibilities.

Wabi-sabi, another well-known expression of Japanese aesthetics, embraces transience and imperfection, expressing it through asymmetry, asperity and simplicity. It finds beauty in rough natural objects, in austerity and modesty. The influence of the Zen Buddhist philosophy of constant flux and impermanence is clear. A preference for seasonal motifs is one expression of this, but perhaps a far more important aspect is what is considered within the dominion of aesthetics. When Japan finally re-engaged with the world and sent its art treasures to the World Expositions, they were often categorised as 'craft and industry' rather than 'high art'. It was not until the birth of the arts and crafts movement, itself influenced by Japan, that the concept of art was broadened. Flower arrangement, tea ceremonies and clothing could be 'high art', too. Just as Ancient Greek humanism represents ideals of beauty and perfection, to a Japanese eye wabi-sabi represents the pantheon of aesthetic values.

One other attempt to explain Japanese aesthetics, refined throughout the Edo period and to which today's designers still automatically refer as the

28

- Shúzo's - (1888–1941) Structure of Iki. The starting point of difference, is Kuki Japanese word iki, imperfectly translated as ‘chic’, ‘refinement’ or ‘detachment’, is key to Kuki's representation of aesthetic difference. Iki was in many ways the product of repression. Throughout the Edo period feudal class arrangements and sumptuary laws that restricted clothing were at odds with economic reality. The merchant classes had become wealthier and more important to the functioning of society than the samurai, whose wealth was based on land and whose function as a warrior class was made somewhat useless during the peace of the Edo period. Perhaps unable to compete with a rising merchant class, the shogunate issued sumptuary decrees restricting clothing. Iki developed as a subtle way for the merchant classes to express sophistication. Not permitted to wear silk kimonos, merchants would sew gorgeous silk linings on the inside of rough kimonos such that they could only be glimpsed. Iki stressed an attitude of detachment, of being perfectly dressed but not caring, somewhat similar to ‘cool’ and also perhaps to ‘dandyism’, although in Edo women could be the embodiment of iki, too. Enjoyment of the pleasure quarters was part of this very urban aesthetic and courtesans were often said to be the expression of it, with a haughty disdain, a cool perfection and an ability for endless witty flirtation.

Striped patterns were said to be physical expressions of iki as stripes never meet and represent a flirtation that could continue forever. It would be very un-iki to complete a flirtation and for it to become domestic and ordinary.

Modernisation The era that followed Edo is named the Meiji period (1868–1912) after the long-serving Meiji Emperor. It was a long, serious period of great change and national development and is often compared to the Victorian era. Initially, missions were sent across the world to discover the technologies and social policies needed for rapid modernisation. Military reforms were considered paramount and the Emperor was transformed from a 'feminine' figure in robes and make-up to a dynamic, masculine figure in military uniform whose image was disseminated across the country in schools, offices and public buildings.

The imperial family was used in a variety of ways to affect change: the Empress stopped blackening her teeth and the majority of women quickly followed; the Emperor started to eat meat and dairy and as the population followed they grew rapidly taller, gaining an average of 5 centimetres in a generation.

Most influential was the way in which the male and female bodies were considered. Whereas previously male and female clothing was based on the kimono, modern clothing was much more highly gendered. For men, this meant tailored suits, which were decreed compulsory for government officials in 1872 and standard business attire in 1876. For women, it meant bustle dresses – garments that were a significant deviation from the shape of the body and even more unsuitable for Japanese women’s bodies and

29

lifestyles than for larger European and American women. Indeed, the moment when Japan entered the modern fashion system corresponded, for women, with perhaps the most profoundly anti-modern fashion in terms of function, efficiency and bodily naturalism. It is a curiosity of modernity that the most elaborate forms of ornamentalism, which modernism was to eventually banish, manifested themselves in its early stages. Because of the bustle style's incongruity with the underlying aesthetic direction of modernity, and the fact that women were later placed in the role of national symbol when Japan fought wars with China and then Russia, the kimono remained the dominant clothing style for women until a second wave of modernisation after the First World War. As in Europe and America, modernity in clothing for Japan was a twostage affair, with female clothing finding appropriate forms for modern life well after males had become at home in suits. Despite modernity's rationalism and rupture of tradition, in fashion it is early modernity that places women in their most ornamental and impractical garments, and in this Japan was no exception.

At the beginning of the Meiji period unequal treaties were imposed on Japan, and it was believed by the Japanese elite that these would be reversed if Japan could demonstrate that it was ‘civilised’ according to European and American terms. To this end, in 1883 Japan built the Rokumeikan, a casino-like building in central Tokyo. It was used to entertain foreign guests in such a faultless western atmosphere that they would feel themselves among equals. It hosted French banquets and the latest European dances, with the men dressed in suits imported from London tailors and the women in the latest dress fashions from Paris. Although ‘Rokumeikan diplomacy’ was a political failure, the short period has an important place in Japanese cultural memory as a demonstration of Japan’s ability to rapidly adapt to modernity. With its images of frock coats and bustle dresses, it is also a symbol of just how alien that experience must have been.

This period also points to another important phenomenon as Japan began to negotiate between two totally different fashion systems. Once the Rokumeikan dining and dancing was over, the members of the Japanese elite would have returned home and immediately changed back into kimonos. As suits became a public necessity this phenomenon became known as the ‘double life’: wearing one thing in public and another at home. This behaviour was due in part to the incompatibility of furniture: Japanese would traditionally relax on the tatami mat floor, which would have been very difficult in a suit or a bustle dress. It was also a deep psychological expression of Japan's cultural predicament and it remains an enduring example of the delicate balance of belonging equally to two radically different clothing cultures.

A casual glance around any railway station in Tokyo today shows that the male suit gained a quick and lasting foothold in Japanese fashion.

In Europe the suit evolved after the French Revolution, as men no longer wished to look decadent or aristocratic, as capitalism grew out of the black

30

seriousness of Protestantism, as English devolution meant the English gentry began to manage their estates and needed woollen, tailored garments to ride in, and as men assumed a serious and useful posture in the Industrial Revolution, placing the full burden of decorative display onto women. None of these dynamics, except perhaps for the growing influence of the mercantile classes, was particularly important for Japan. The adoption of the suit in Japan was essentially an engagement with a Japanese modernity, not a re-run of a European modernity; it was aesthetic more than political, religious or practical.

Military service was compulsory throughout the Meiji period and many men would have first experienced tailored, divided garments during their service years and also via their school uniforms, which were based on military uniforms.

Today, many boys' school uniforms are still based on the black Prussian officer's coat, Imperial Germany being one of the first models for Japanese military reorganisation. It is interesting to note that the military and the monarchy were both leaders in the reconceptualisation of clothing in Japan, whereas in most other countries they were extremely conservative institutions. But the key to the speed of Japanese modernisation in clothing, as in everything else, was the example given by the elite. The faith placed in the average Japanese person to transform from a feudal subject to a modern self-disciplined citizen was extraordinary and demonstrates both the high levels of literacy in Japan and a readiness to engage with modernity and its new ideas and clothes.

Fashion without rank One remnant of this rapid engagement with modern clothing was the way class was demonstrated in clothing. In Europe and America the inexorable rise of the middle classes created fashion structures to define and reinforce class. The higher classes could not simply dress differently, as those below them could more and more easily imitate them, so they had to change the way they dressed at a speed that demonstrated their pecuniary strength. This aspect of fashion and its accompanying customs, conventions and institutions developed over hundreds of years.

Throughout the Edo period in Japan the differentiation between classes was legally enforced and no such system of using fashion to show class entitlement developed. The concepts of self-regulation, such as the idea of dressing like 'new money', also did not come into existence. There is a sense, too, that because of its relatively recent foreign import, western fashion was equally foreign to everyone. These two things are perhaps the reason why all Japanese feel entitled to participate in fashion and why Louis Vuitton handbags are owned by 54 per cent of women and carried by schoolgirls. Fashion in Japan is not governed by a sense of entitlement or feared as something that can be ridiculed as above one's place. It is this relative freedom from the class consciousness of European and American fashions that allows Japanese

31

fashion to be more playful and to speak less about where the wearer fits into the social hierarchy and more about their aesthetic enthusiasms.

The long, serious Meiji period of tail coats and nation building was followed by the brief and decadent Taisho- period (1912–26), just as the lengthy Victorian age was followed by the shorter Edwardian age. The First World War brought an economic boom to Japan as its goods filled the vacuum caused by the financial and political problems in Europe. A confident Japan had defeated Russia in a war in 1905 and was reaping the fruits of rapid modernisation.

Access to the pleasures of modernity was no longer restricted by difficult study, foreign language learning and travel and expensive tailors and dressmakers.

Department stores evolved out of the traditional dry goods stores and for the first time shoppers could look at and touch the merchandise; their consumption was no longer mediated through a clerk. Japanese and American movies appeared, as did advertising and women's magazines. Modernity was no longer the preserve of the elite; it did not need to be studied and understood, it could just be ‘done’. And for those who could not afford the new clothes, with just a bob haircut and a night at a dance hall you could do modernity. Though their actual numbers were very small, new characters appeared on the streets of trendy Ginza and Asakusa: mobo and moga, modern boys and modern girls.

It was Japan's flapper age and at last women began to have truly modern clothes and the accompanying social provocations. Japanese girls used fashion to express the needs and desires of a modern woman: political and social equality; clothing for modern transport, city life and new sports; a modern aesthetic – streamlining, abstraction of the body and radical simplification. Yet magazines published articles about how to get the modern girl look without the attendant social challenge. Dressing as a modern girl need not mean you wanted to rock the boat. In this way, the possibilities of fashion as a social provocation were domesticated and the clothes were separated from any social or political meanings. A style can be adopted from somewhere else but its social meanings are often totally re-made and different. This process is still crucial to understanding Japanese fashion.

Youth culture The descent into fascism and the Second World War saw so much destruction that the recovery could not help but bring about monumental changes in clothing as it did in everything else. As with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which flattened Tokyo, the end of the war and the occupation saw a great wave of new clothing replace what was lost. It was from this time that the vast majority of Japanese people began to wear western clothing for all occasions. The recovery was a time of new materialist dreams and new clothing styles to go with them. The disgrace of losing the war lowered the authority of fathers and husbands inside and outside the family and led

32

to a more feminised, consumer society in which women controlled household spending and the principle pleasures were shopping and reinvention via clothing.

As the Japanese economic miracle took hold in the 1950s and 1960s, 'salaryman' culture developed around it: lifetime loyalty to one's company, long hours and socialising with business associates rather than spending time at home. This rupture in the family and absence of patriarchal structure led to the development of a new youth culture. The worlds of manga (comics) and later anime (animation), and the myriad subcultures and their fashions, began to grow. While identification with the company was important for adult workers, the identity of young people was associated with a chosen subcultural group. Wearing the styles of the group was considered more important than demonstrating any personal style or identity.

Perhaps the most strikingly different aspect to the way youth cultures affected fashion in Japan as opposed to elsewhere is the aesthetic of cute. Cute permeates everything in Japan, especially clothing. Although some claim its antecedents in the tiny seventeenth century sculpture of netsuke, and even in pitiable characters in the classic eleventh century book The Tale of Genji, the real explosion of cute occurred in the 1970s. Osamu Tezuka's manga and anime, such as Astro Boy (manga 1952, anime 1963), sought to be cuter than Disney's Snow White and, via big eyes and the innocent earnestness of young characters, erased the caricatures of evil Japanese in American war propaganda.

In the 1970s young people began to desire this new aesthetic. To the dismay of teachers, there was even a craze among schoolgirls for writing in rounded, cute handwriting. Girls found that in the new cute look there was an alternative to being beautiful or sexy. In Japan, adulthood does not always offer the freedom and opportunity that it does in other cultures. Instead, it often brings social obligation and devotion to a company or family. Cute has been characterised as the desire to extend the period of childhood for as long as possible.

Youth-oriented consumer culture also focuses everything on the young, and on young women in particular, who would be keen to remain the focus of sociocultural production. Geopolitics, too, has been seen as a cause of the preference for cute, with Japanese dependence on America being the model for individual dependence on company, family or subcultural group. Being in the comfortable position of being looked after is at the centre of cute: the ability to cause in the other the desire to look after you. But while it is a social strategy of willed dependence, cute also performs the political function of undermining current ideologies of gender and power, allowing young women new forms of agency in a patriarchal society. Cute clothing would also appear to be a postmodern aesthetic, rejecting modernism's abstraction, unity, subtlety and fidelity to the body and pulling towards postmodern fashion's arbitrary shapes, figurative patterns and disunity. Furthermore, what capitalist mass-production processes de-personalise, cute fashion is able to re-personalise.

33

Revolutionary fashion By the 1980s the economic miracle had turned into one of the world's largest economic bubbles, with astronomical prices and decadent excess. At its height the land which the Imperial Palace occupies in central Tokyo was worth more than the entire landmass of Canada. Japanese designers had begun to achieve international recognition and success in the 1970s, led

by Kenzo Takada's exotic designs. Simple exoticism was eclipsed as a wave of three designers followed Kenzo, creating collections that not only achieved international success but changed the very conception of fashion. Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, formed an avantgarde, drawing on both Japanese tradition and a radically new aesthetic that rejected western modernism in fashion. It has been argued that the western fashion system is an information flow from the centre, Paris, to the periphery, dictating popularity of forms and ways of seeing the body via the authority of this knowledge production. While initial proof of their acceptance and influence was the big three designers showing collections in Paris Fashion Week, it soon became clear that Tokyo itself had emerged as a new fashion centre, doing radically different things and disrupting the traditional structure of the global fashion system. If there were multiple centres, then the idea of a somehow unified global fashion, emanating from Paris, was greatly undermined.

Perhaps even more influential was Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo's challenge to what clothing was and what its principle aesthetic could be.

German idealist Georg Hegel had argued that the purpose of clothing was the construction of an abstract body. This followed the classical idea that the ideal human body was the source of beauty and clothing, like art and architecture, was a means of expressing that idealism. Clothing was to be ironed and not wrinkled because cloth was a means of hiding imperfect skin, or expressing an abstract, ideal skin. Shapes were to be tailored to the body, naturally emphasising, framing and playing with forms, but always a way of expressing the body it was covering. However, the Japanese designers overturned this orthodoxy and found inspiration in the very different tradition of Japanese clothing. Miyake's 1976 theme of making clothing from one piece of cloth privileged the Japanese tradition of wrapping the body as the kimono had done. The asymmetry of his clothes ignored the fundamental principle of clothing as the echo of ideal human symmetry. Yamamoto broke the taboo of ripping and tearing cloth, and he deliberately added holes and creases because he was not sewing abstract skin but doing something completely different. They ignored colour, creating a cool elegance in multiple layers of black. Their starting point was not the body but the cloth itself, and it was this influence that, just as Japonisme had done in the 1870s, reminded the west that there was more than one way of seeing the world.

That was over thirty years ago, and while those designers became institutions and did their part to establish younger designers, subsequent big

34

name designers failed to emerge and lead a new era. The last decades have seen myriad global changes sweep across fashion: environmentalism questions the disposable nature of fashion itself; the internet spreads knowledge instantly and fast fashion reproduces designer collections within weeks, debatably stealing and draining creativity or democratising and revolutionising the fashion world. The national story of Japan has switched from the 1980s narrative of an economic superpower of little cultural influence to a nation in which economic decline is contrasted by a booming 'gross national cool'.

Japanese popular culture has spread across Asia and the world.

In a world in which globalisation means that local variation grows in the full knowledge of fashion everywhere, not in dark isolation, the very relationship between artist-designers and their national culture becomes blurred to the point where categorisation of any cultural product, including clothing, by country becomes increasingly meaningless. And yet there is still something irreducibly Japanese in the fashion and clothes you will see in this exhibition. Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion seeks to show, explain and define what this new era of fashion in Tokyo consists of, and how it draws on the particular fashion history of Japan and its attendant conflicts, enthusiasms and dreams. Fashion is a particularly aspirational art form; it shows not only what you are but what you hope to be. These five designers are not the final word on what the last decade in Japanese fashion has meant, nor the final word on the general direction of Japanese fashion. They represent a first draft of fashion history, a demonstration of the fabulous creativity of this new era and myriad answers to the questions about what Japan is doing now and why Japanese fashion is still relevant, innovative and wonderfully unique.

Further reading Bernstein, G. L., Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, University of California Press, Berkeley, US, 1991 Brown, K. H., Minichiello, S. et al., Taisho- Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, US, 2001 Clark, J., Tipton, E. K. et al., Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s.

Australian Humanities Research Foundation, Sydney, Australia, 2000 Fukai, A., Vinken, B., Frankel, F. & Kurino, H., Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion, Barbican Art Library, London, UK, 2010 Hanley, S. B., Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, US, 1997 - T., In Praise of Shadows, translated by T. J. Harper & E. G. Seidensticker, Leete's Island Books, Jun'ichiro, Stony Creek, Connecticut, US, 1977 Keet, P., The Tokyo Look Book, Kodansha, Tokyo, Japan, 2007 Kuki, S., Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki, translated by John Clark, Power Publications, Sydney, Australia, 1997 Kyojiro, H., Louis Vuitton Japan: The Building of Luxury, Nikkei, Tokyo, Japan, 2003 Minnich, H. B., Japanese Costume and the Makers of its Elegant Tradition, C.E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, UK, 1963 Seidensticker, E., Tokyo Rising: The City since the Great Earthquake, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., US, 1991 Slade, T., Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History, Berg Publishers, Oxford, UK, 2009 Steele, V., Mears, P., Kawamura, Y. & Narumi, H., Japan Fashion Now, Yale University Press, New Haven, US, 2010

35

ANREALAGE Kunihiko Morinaga

Kunihiko Morinaga was born in 1980 in Tokyo. He graduated in sociology from Waseda University then continued his studies at Vantan Design Academy. The name of his brand is a combination of the words ‘A Real’, ‘Un Real’ and ‘AGE’. He is meticulous in his design of clothes, always faithful to the motto 'God is in the details' by valuing little things unnoticed in our daily, hectic lives.

Selected brand history

2012 Participated in the exhibition Future Beauty : 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, Museum of

Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo

2011 Designed clothes for the exhibition Miffy in Fashion, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands

Received the 29th Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix Newcomer's Prize and the Shiseido Sponsorship Award Opened flagship store in Harajuku, Tokyo

2010 Participated in the exhibition Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, Barbican

Centre, London, England and Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

2009 Exhibited works at Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden ’

2008 Presented 2009 spring/summer collection installation, Tokyo, inspired by the theme ‘

2005 Presented 2006 spring/summer collection show, main observatory of Tokyo Tower (Tokyo collection debut)

Won the Avant-Garde Grand Prix at Gen Art, New York City

2003 Launched ANREALAGE

45

mintdesigns Hokuto Katsui Nao Yagi

Hokuto Katsui was born in 1973. After studying at Parsons School of Design in New York, he moved to London and graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design.

Nao Yagi was born in 1973. After studying art criticism at Doshisha University, she graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, London.

Katsui and Yagi returned to Japan after their graduation and launched mintdesigns in 2001. Mintdesigns defies wardrobe boundaries and aims to improve living space and daily life by defining clothes as designed products.

Selected brand history 2012 Exhibited ‘Fall in Pop ’ at Canon: NEOREAL IN THE FOREST, Milan, Italy 2011 Presented Happy Mistake – Pattern on Pattern exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan 2010 Participated in 28th Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix, Tokyo 2009 Exhibited ‘to be someone’ at Tokyo Fibre: Senseware, Milan, Italy 2008 Participated in São Paulo Fashion Week, Brazil

Became visiting professors at Osaka Seikei University 2007 Opened mintdesigns garage store at Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo 2006 Involved with Designer Invitation project by UNIQLO 2005 Received 7th Moët & Chandon New Designers' Award 2002 Presented Tokyo collection debut 2001 Launched mintdesigns

61

SASQUATCHfabrix Daisuke Yokoyama Katsuki Araki

Daisuke Yokoyama was born in 1977. After graduating in architectural design from Nagaoka Institute of Design, he worked for a graphic design company in Tokyo.

Katsuki Araki was born in 1977. A graduate in textile design from Nagaoka Institute of Design, he initially worked in sales for a large children's clothing retailer.

Yokoyama and Araki launched SASQUATCHfabrix in 2003. In addition to this main brand they create clothing under the labels EOTOTO and Chilling.

Most of their products are produced using their original fabrics. Yokoyama and Araki also run the graphic design studio Wonder Worker Guerilla Band, through which they create graphic designs for the fashion and music industries.

2011

2009

2008

2007

2006

2004

2003

77

Selected brand history Exhibited installation works at LN-CC, a specialty store in London, England Wonder Worker Guerrilla Band collaborated with UNIQLO UT on the T-shirt collection/ brand Hot Chocolate and the layout of the UT Harajuku store, Tokyo Launched Chilling brand Launched EOTOTO brand, featuring American Indian-style clothing Presented first Wonder Worker Guerrilla Band exhibition, Hello Taipei!!

Produced a bike for Kalavinka, a racing bike brand Participated in the exhibition The Royal House at Monkey Gallery, Tokyo Participated in UNIQLO's Japanese Pop Culture T-shirt Project (directed by Kashiwa Sato) for the opening of UNIQLO Soho, New York City Produced skateboard decks and bangles for furniture manufacturer Tendo Mokko Founded SASQUATCHfabrix

Theatre Products Akira Takeuchi Tayuka Nakanishi Kao Kanamori

Akira Takeuchi was born in 1976. After graduating from Esmod Japon, he worked for Comme des Garçons as a pattern maker. He is an associate professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. He started his brand for men's clothes, PASCAL Donquino, in 2009.

Tayuka Nakanishi was born in 1977. After graduating from Esmod Japon, she worked for Sanei International Co. Ltd as a planner.

Kao Kanamori was born in 1974. After graduating in art criticism from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, she worked for Little More Gallery. She became the executive producer of Spectacle in the Farm in 2009 and founded the NPO Drifters International in 2010.

Akira Takeuchi, Tayuka Nakanishi and Kao Kanamori founded Theatre Products in 2001.

Selected brand history 2013 From 2013–14 autumn/winter collection Miwa Fujiwara joined as designer

Tayuka Nakanishi retired 2011 Opened store at JR Osaka Mitsukoshi Isetan, Osaka

Participated in the Spectacle on the Bay festival, Yokohama 2010 Kanamori founded NPO Drifters International (with Akira Nakamura and Teppei Fujiwara)

Participated in the Spectacle in the Farm festival, Nasu Kogen 2009 Opened flagship store in Omotesandó, Tokyo

Participated in the Spectacle in the Farm festival, Nasu Kogen (also in 2010)

Takeuchi launched men's brand Pascal Donquino 2008 Toured Cut & Sewn exhibition to Indonesia 2007 Produced The State of Theatre Products exhibition, Parco Museum, Shibuya, Tokyo 2006 Opened store at Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo

Presented 2006–07 autumn/winter runway show at LaForet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo 2004 Opened store at Zero Gate, Shibuya, Tokyo 2001 Founded Theatre Products

Exhibited at Little More Gallery, Tokyo

93

writtenafterwards Yoshikazu Yamagata

Yoshikazu Yamagata was born in 1980. While still a student at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London he worked as an assistant for John Galliano and won the Italian international competition, ITS#THREE (third International Talents Support competition) in three categories. He graduated at the top of his class from the college and returned to Japan in 2005. He founded writtenafterwards with Kentaro Tamai in 2007 and became independent in 2009.

Since then he has also headed up a private fashion design school, coconogacco, and continues to propose that the role of fashion is to communicate about culture, society, education and the environment.

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007 2006

Selected brand history Awarded ‘Fashion Editors Club Japan Newcomer Award’ Presented ‘The Seven Gods’ collection at Miyashita Park, Tokyo Presented ‘Crime and Punishment’ collection, Vienna, Austria Presented ‘Freemaison’ collection at VACANT, Tokyo Presented ‘Crime and Punishment’ collection at Tabloid – Tokyo Creator’s District Presented ‘The Fashion Show of the Gods’ collection as an installation in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia Became sole director of writtenafterwards Exhibited illustrated book, I Got Zero Score, and presented graduate fashion show, ‘Opoint’, at Claska Hotel, Tokyo Presented opening fashion show at Arnhem Mode Biennale, the Netherlands Presented ‘The Fashion Show of the Gods’ collection at Taito Designers Village, Tokyo Presented 2008/09 autumn/winter runway show, Tokyo debut Designed masks for Hedi Slimane photo shoot Founded writtenafterwards with Kentaro Tamai Planned and participated in 21_21 Design Sight joint exhibition, Tokyo

105

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established in April 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation to champion research, education and exhibitions of significant and innovative contemporary art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.

SCAF works closely with artists in commissioning new work and developing exhibitions that energise and respond to the gallery’s four-part complex comprising a large exhibition area, mini ‘out-site’ space, versatile theatre annexe and Zen garden. Extensive projects are developed through partnerships with public art institutions at a regional, state and national level while broad public engagement with contemporary art is fostered through publishing and forum programmes. In addition, Sherman Visual Arts Residency (SVAR), located directly across the road from the gallery, offers a supportive environment and accommodation for visiting artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, curators and scholars. The experience of developing Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) as a respected commercial and educational enterprise within the international art world underpins the Foundation at both a conceptual and practical level. Dr Gene Sherman AM, SCAF Chairman and Executive Director, drew on her extensive international networks to establish the Foundation, and initiates and guides its activities in collaboration with an advisory board of respected peers: Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts and Michael Whitworth.

SCAF is a member of CIMAM, the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.

122

2008

2011

Project 1

Project 10

Ai Weiwei: Under Construction In partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney

Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge

Project 2

Dinh Q. Lê: Erasure

Jonathan Jones: Untitled (The Tyranny of Distance)

Project 12

Project 3

Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall

Project 11

Jitish Kallat: Aquasaurus 2012 2009

Project 13

Project 4

Janet Laurence: After Eden

The View from Elsewhere In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Project 14

Project 5

Project 15

Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA

Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture In partnership with National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Project 6

Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country

Charwei Tsai: Water, Earth and Air 2013 2010

Project 16

Project 7

Fugitive Structures 2013 / Andrew Burns: Crescent House In association with BVN Donovan Hill

Fiona Tan: Coming Home In association with National Art School, Sydney Project 8

Brook Andrew: The Cell In association with Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

Project 17

Collection+: Chiharu Shiota Curated by Doug Hall AM For project details, visit sherman-scaf.org.au

Project 9

Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

123

Acknowledgements

The National Art School

The National Art School (NAS) is situated in Darlinghurst, a lively hub of art and culture in Sydney, and is the oldest, and one of the most prestigious, visual arts institutions in Australia. The School’s values are informed by the ongoing debate about the place of art in contemporary society and the basic premise that drawing is fundamental to an understanding of visual language. The NAS Gallery was opened in 2006 and features an annual exhibition programme reflecting the vitality and complexity of the visual arts within a local and international context. The NAS Gallery encourages appreciation and critical perspectives of art and its role in society through direct engagement with artists and original works of art. Research, publications, public programmes and exhibitions featuring multidiscipline group and solo projects by Australian and international artists support the School’s philosophy of being profoundly aware of the past while recognising and engaging with the present.

Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion was originally presented in 2011 at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and organised by Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation and Bunka Fashion Research Institute, Bunka Gakuen University.

SCAF thanks Bunka Gakuen University and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery for their generous collaboration on this project and the five fashion brands for their participation in the Sydney exhibition.

Thank you to Katie Dyer, Curator and Gallery Manager, and Anita Taylor, former Director, National Art School, for their enthusiastic and professional approach to all aspects of our creative partnership.

We also thank the following individuals and organisations for their contribution and support: ANREALAGE studio Chris Bosse and Alessandra Moschella, LAVA Armando Chant, Peter McNeil and students, University of Technology, Sydney Olivia Gubala, SCAF intern Motako Hori, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery mintdesigns studio Akira and Tomoko Nakayama SASQUATCHfabrix studio Toby Slade, University of Tokyo Olivier Solente Yoko Takagi, Bunka Gakuen University Theatre Products studio Gotaro Uematsu writtenafterwards studio SCAF and the National Art School greatly appreciate the generous support of the Japan Foundation.

We appreciate the significant contribution of our Education Partner, the University of Technology, Sydney.

Heartfelt thanks also to the Nelson Meers Foundation for its continuing support of SCAF’s Culture+Ideas programme.

SCAF is proudly supported by the Patron’s Circle.

Thank you to Johnnie Walker, A.R.T., Tokyo, for his wise and sensitive advice.

124

125

We are eternally grateful to Brian Sherman for his focused, passionate and unwavering support of SCAF’s activities.

Contributors

Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. She has a specialised knowledge of art, literary theory and French and English literature and spent seventeen years teaching, researching and lecturing at secondary and tertiary levels. As Director of Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) she organised up to twenty-two exhibitions annually, including regional and national touring exhibitions within Australia, and international touring exhibitions through the AsiaPacific region. Gene and Brian Sherman have sponsored a Master of Fine Arts Administration student at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales (1997–2007), a studio at Bundanon and a contemporary Australian art-research room at the Schaeffer Fine Arts Library, The University of Sydney. They have also funded The University of New South Wales postgraduate studio complex at the newly built Gateway@COFA campus. Dr Sherman is currently Deputy Chair of the National Portrait Gallery Board, Canberra; a member of the Art & Australia Advisory Board, the International Association of Art Critics and the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee; and serves as an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador, a role that involves inspiring young people to become Asia literate and thus expand their career and life opportunities. She regularly lectures to a wide range of institutions on topics such as gallery management, the art of collecting, philanthropy, private foundations, Australian and Asian contemporary art, and contemporary Japanese fashion. Dr Sherman was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (2003) and a Doctorate of Letters honoris causa by The University of Sydney (2008). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for her cultural philanthropy and her support of emerging and established artists.

126

Katie Dyer is the founding Curator and Gallery Manager at the National Art School (NAS), Sydney, where she has initiated the development and implementation of the NAS Gallery’s exhibition programme and management of its unique collection. Under her curatorship the NAS Gallery has presented innovative artist-initiated exhibitions and projects, along with commissions and significant presentations of contemporary and historical exhibitions.

Prior to her role at NAS, Katie worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia and the Museum of Modern Art and The Drawing Center in New York. She has been engaged as a freelance curator on several projects, including the MCA’s Primavera series in 2010.

Katie lectures in contemporary art, curatorial practice and professional practice at NAS and is regularly invited to lecture at universities and to speak at a range of public and academic programmes and events.

Dr Yoko Takagi, professor at the Bunka Fashion Research Institute of the Bunka Gakuen University, received her MA in fashion history from Ochanomizu University and her PhD in archaeology and art history from Free University of Brussels. In addition to curating Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2011, Kobe Fashion Museum, 2012, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and National Art School Gallery, 2013) she has organised and supervised several exhibitions, including: Katagami – Les Pochoirs Japonais et Le Japonisme (The Japan Foundation/Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, 2006–07), 6+ Antwerp Fashion (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2009) and Katagami Style (Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Mie Prefectural Art Museum, 2012).

127

Dr. Toby Slade is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo researching the history and theory of fashion in the context of Asian modernity. As well as fashion he teaches courses in Japanese popular culture and art history. His previous research has focused on Asian responses to modernity as seen through art objects of the everyday, like clothing, the suit and its role in modernity, the ideas of style and the classic, and the governing dynamics of systems of fashion. Born and educated in Sydney he received his Bachelor’s degree and Doctorate in Art History and Theory at the University of Sydney. His doctoral research examined the modernity of Japanese clothing and the implications of that unique sartorial history for contemporary theories of fashion. He received an Australian Postgraduate Award and a Japanese Monbukagakusho Scholarship for this research. His book Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History, published by Berg (2009), covers the entire sweep of fashion and clothing in Japan from the earliest times to today. He has also published widely on fashion and Japanese historical and contemporary popular culture.

Feel & Think A New Era of Tokyo Fashion Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation National Art School Gallery 20 June – 17 August 2013 SCAF Project 18

©

Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and National Art School Copyright in the text is held by the authors. Copyright in the images is held by the artist unless otherwise indicated.

The material in this publication is under copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Where applicable, every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and acknowledge the source material. Errors or omissions are unintentional.

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Chairman, Executive Director Dr Gene Sherman AM Associate Director Dolla S. Merrillees Manager – Projects and Installation Michael Moran Manager – Gene & Brian Sherman Collection Aaron de Souza Communications and Events Coordinator Sophie Holvast Acting Executive Assistant to Gene Sherman Hannah Brunskill Exhibitions and Projects Assistant Danielle Devery Exhibition and Catalogue Management Dolla S. Merrillees and Michael Moran Advisory Board Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts, Michael Whitworth Communications Adviser Michael Young Design Mark Gowing Design Editor Fiona Egan Proofreader Marni Williams All images courtesy Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Printed in Australia by Ligare

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and National Art School Title: Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion; prepared

by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and National Art School ISBN: 978-0-9807763-8-6 (hbk) Subjects: National Art School (Australia) – Exhibitions.

Fashion – Japan – Tokyo – Exhibitions.

Costume design – Japan – Tokyo – Exhibitions.

Other Authors/Contributors: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and National Art School (Australia) Dewey Number: 746.92

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing a platform for innovative visual artists primarily from Asia, Australia and the Pacific Rim. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and will support our exhibition, educational, public and artist-in-residence programmes.

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street, Paddington Sydney NSW 2021 Australia ABN 25 122 280 200 sherman-scaf.org.au

National Art School Gallery Forbes Street, Darlinghurst Sydney NSW 2010 Australia Phone +61 (0)2 9339 8744 nas.edu.au

SCAF proudly supported by the Patrons’ Circle

Exhibition supporter

Culture+Ideas proudly supported by

In-kind supporter

Education partner