Japan began to emulate Western fashion during the middle of the 19th century. Tokyo is considered to be the most costly city in the world.
But it’s sooooooo worth it!
Ever since I was in grade school and learned about Geisha, I’ve been obsessed with Japanese culture. I'm totally in love with Japan, from cooking to furniture and interior design, from the latest fashion design to traditional crafts, textiles and art. Everything fascinates me!
For me Japanese women are the most beautiful women in the world not to mention they are insanely fashionable too. I’ve seen in numerous blogs them wearing unique and trendy outfits and photographers taking full advantage of combining them in the decorative streets of Tokyo. But to see the intermingling of the two trends happen in front of your own eyes is priceless.
Japanese people are absolutely amazing in their sense of style. Their art culture, type of figure and dark hair allows them to mix styles as far as their fantasy can be and it looks stunning.
They take European design or fashion and bring it up to perfection in each detail -that's what I think the Japanese fashion is.
This is also why I’ve decided to make the theme for our Fall/winter collection to be Tokyo through my eyes. I say my eyes because my approach is in no way to take pictures of street style and be inspired, I’ve decided to focus more on the little things.
Learning Japanese would be very interesting indeed, the script itself has a sort of illustrative charm to me. I find it graphically a masterpiece.
One of my Professors when I was in school help me grow my obsession with Japanese culture even further when she introduced me to Japanese craft books. I find craft books to be the most inspiring for Creative insight. Japanese books especially are so simple that the fine detailing always shows through. It's almost refreshing to flip through the books.
So one of the first things I did when I arrived to Tokyo was hunt down every craft book shop I could find.
I found a Book of masking tape. It has the usual Japanese care for graphic details, colors and size. It contains a series of wonderful delicate pictures of masking tape, used in different ways, a brief history, mentions of Japanese artists, a list of Japanese brands and shops carrying them, and a useful color chart at the end of the book.
I think a filled one luggage alone with books. From the books I collected here's some of my favorites that I scanned just for you.
I am completely in love with every single pattern. It's the perfect mix of sweet, not too cute/not too serious, folksy, happy, and just plain ol' cool. These are all so amazing. And I also like this dark bloody color of red for the embroidery. What beautiful photography! It's so impossible to photograph these items. This way is perfect. Each of these photos not only show detail but also gives a sense of movement.
