I can’t remember how I came across the recommendation for this book, but I’m so glad I did. Although I knew, through a vague cultural osmosis, that Japanese denim is The Best, and that Harajuku is (was?) some sort of Center of Style, and also, as a sewist, that Japanese cottons are really amazing quality, I had no context for any of this. In my mind it was part of this sort of fuzzy cultural impression that Japan is, and always has been, good at fabric.
Ametora puts it all into a fascinating chronological historical context. Marx does an excellent job (in only 200 pages!) of setting the scene, starting immediately post-World War II, when fashion was not seen as a suitable masculine pursuit in Japan, and students wore identical uniforms until the age of 18. He traces the work of the few, brave sartorialists who blazed the trail for Japanese menswear, copying American post-war style in a pre-internet era where actual examples of traditional American fashion in Japan were few and far between. As they mastered the art of “Ivy” fashion and incorporated new American aesthetics into the various looks, they paved the way for menswear to be culturally acceptable, and then celebrated, and then for it to become the powerhouse that it is today. Japanese textile workers and artists studied American workwear down to to the stitch, down to the strand of cotton, in order to reproduce it — and then surpass it. Marx also discusses the various youth trends in Japan and how the textile makers adapted and adopted their tastes, and how in turn those have been exported around the world. His afterword, written very recently, is also great.
Sometimes when you’re reading a book like this you come across a thrilling little insight, and you just know you’re going to be dropping it at dinner parties for the foreseeable future. Here’s mine: In order to establish men’s fashion in Japan, our entrepreneurial sartorialists established the first Japanese men’s fashion magazines. In these magazines, the writers detailed the rules of Ivy League-style (“Ivy”) menswear – think blazers and oxford button-downs, loafers and boat shoes. They did this because, as complete outsiders to this world, they had no brothers, uncles, peers to watch and imitate – they were literally starting from scratch. So these magazines detailed *everything* – how and when to use which buttons, exactly how many quarter inches your cuffs should be turned. Shosuke Ishizu and Toshiyuki Kurosu’s book Take Ivy was complete with photos of well-dressed dudes on American Ivy League campuses in the 1960s. As Japanese fashionistas were born and groomed with the help of these magazines, Americans were growing increasingly, well, sloppy. When “preppy” American brands like Gap and J. Crew started (re?) gaining cultural cache in the early 2000s and wanted to re-introduce “traditional” men’s fashion, they found that a lot of the cultural knowledge had been lost – no one was asking their dad how exactly to turn their cuffs anymore, they were just wearing sweatpants. So where did J. Crew et. al. turn to learn how to dress properly in the traditional American way? Take Ivy! I love this so much!
Marx discusses this phenomenon throughout the book of course, but I particularly like this bit on page 269:
Strict, rule-based fashion then incentivized followers to build up comprehensive knowledge. United Arrows’ Hirofumi Kurino says, “When it’s your own culture, you tend to stop learning mid-way through. But we kept studying until we got to the very edge of knowledge.” As Kurino explains, an American looked at a button-down collar and thought, “I have to attach these buttons,” but the Japanese in the 1960s thought instead, “Why does this collar have buttons?” One question led to another for over fifty years, resulting in a nation with an unprecedented collective understanding of American fashion.
If you’re interested in fashion history, denim, post-war Japan, or you are just looking for a fun and interesting non-fiction written by a person who knows how to tell a story, this is a great book for you.