Lifestyle
These older women may be 'heading for the coffin,' but they're getting laughs in L.A.
Susan Ware spends each morning, from around 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., crafting jokes.
“I’ve got notebooks. I’ve got sides of the newspaper where I’ve written in the margins. I’ve got jokes written everywhere,” the 80-year-old said. As she thumbs through legal sheets, throwing out old stuff that’s not funny anymore, her two cats and dog lounge lazily on the couch beside her.
Stand-up comedian Susan Ware, 80, favors dark one- and two-liner jokes.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“I take too much time working on jokes,” Ware said, calling her daily practice the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life. “It annoys me because I have other things I would like to do.”
A retired real estate agent, Ware started stand-up at 67, when she realized she didn’t want to die with regrets; she had always wanted to try comedy. At a recent open mic, with a close group of comedian friends, she tried out a bit of new material: “My six-year-old nephew fell down the stairs. Now he’s afraid to go down stairs … if I’m standing behind him.”
“I go to the edge, I will tell you,” Ware said of her dark one- and two-liners. “But people laugh.”
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Older women might not be what come to mind when thinking of comedians. The misconception that women, and certainly older women, have little to contribute to the comedy sphere drives the undercurrent of Max’s popular comedy-drama “Hacks,” which premiered its fourth season on Thursday.
In the show, Jean Smart plays Deborah Vance, a legendary stand-up trying to reclaim her mojo in the face of bookers who think she won’t appeal to younger audiences. (This season Vance tries her luck as a late-night talk show host.) But as audiences learn, Vance is much more than meets the eye.
It’s a story that rings true for several L.A.-based women who began stand-up comedy at a mature age. Speaking to The Times, these women addressed the lingering misogyny and ageism in the stand-up comedy industry, but said comedy offered them an outlet for self-discovery at an age where women can become invisible. The pay off — of drafting jokes, reworking material and performing at open mics and shows — is the thrill of the applause, but even more so, the emotional freedom it affords them.
For the past 22 years, Mary Huth’s life happily revolved around her twin sons. Changing poopy diapers seamlessly transformed into packing snacks for club sports in high school until suddenly, it seemed, they left home for college. On a whim and to fill the void, Huth signed up for a stand-up comedy class.
“It’s kind of like gambling,” the 61-year-old said of her instant addiction to the craft. “They say you hit the jackpot the first time, and then you’re a compulsive gambler after that.”
It’s easy to get “dumped in the deep end” in a city like Los Angeles, which literally has $5 open mics “all day, every day, seven days a week,” said Patricia Resnick, a screenwriter and producer, who said her mom’s death “made [her] want to try things and live life more.”
Patricia Resnick, 72, penned the movie script “9 to 5” before she started stand-up later in life.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Resnick, 72, sees her age as a double-edged sword when it comes to comedy. On one hand, comedy remains a very masculine space, with several women interviewed for this story saying bookers are hesitant to promote older women regardless of their success with audiences.
On the other hand, Resnick, who recently booked the main stage at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank, says her age and experience inherently offers her a unique perspective when it comes to entertaining audiences.
“People like to be surprised in certain ways,” she said. “So when I talk about being a gay, sober, single mom of two kids by donor insemination, I usually introduce it by saying, ‘You know, I want to talk about something very universal that everybody can relate to.’ And of course, everybody laughs because it’s not what they were expecting.”
Huth’s sons and her wife come up in her comedy. One of her jokes centers around her and her wife’s arduous IVF journey. It’s a bit Huth calls “cathartic” and humanizing for LGBTQ+ parents, especially in today’s political climate.
But beyond parenting challenges, she doesn’t lean into her age in her material.
Comedian Mary Huth, 61, started stand-up after her kids went to college.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“I am not interested in doing menopause and Chico’s jokes,” she said. Instead, she critically analyzes the work of younger comics she admires: “Why are they doing it this way? Why is their body moving like this? What are they doing with their timing?”
That strategic thinking, she said, coupled with her ability to not work a full-time job, has paid off. (Many women interviewed for this story said their age gives them the benefit of financial security that younger comics are more likely to lack.) Huth recently booked the Asian Comedy Fest in New York and the Boulder Comedy Festival in Colorado. She also, gleefully, has more Instagram followers than her sons.
“If you would have told me when my kids were seniors in high school that I would be doing this, I would be like, ‘What kind of mushrooms are you on?’” Huth said.
Where other hobbies may be difficult to pick up in middle age, comedy, with its low entrance fee and ubiquitous nature, is an inherently accessible art form.
“Comedy is such a great way for an average person to have a platform and to stand on a stage and use their voice,” said Bobbie Oliver, owner of Tao Comedy Studio, which she said hosts the longest-running all-women’s mic in Los Angeles. “With older women who never had that opportunity in their lives because it just wasn’t really allowed, it’s kind of a freedom for them.”
Tao Comedy Studio owner Bobbie Oliver, 56, hosts a yearly Punk Rock Intersectional Feminist Comedy Festival in June.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
For the record:
12:36 p.m. April 14, 2025A previous version of this story said Bobbie Oliver was the co-owner of Tao Comedy Studio. She is the owner.
Adine Porino found this freedom close to home when a flyer advertising an open mic in her apartment complex, Park La Brea, stopped her in her tracks: “Stand Up Comedy Open Mic Night Every Sunday 6:30 p.m.”
Considered the funny one among her friends, Porino had wanted to try comedy for over a decade, but was always too scared.
“I just thought, well, I’d check it out,” the 67-year-old said.
The host of the mic, Sabine Pfund, was an up-and-coming comedian from Lebanon; most of the attendees were young male comics familiar with the L.A. comic circuit. Porino left the room inspired.
Adine Porino, 67, regularly attends the Park La Brea Sunday night open mic.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“For one week, I just started writing down jokes,” she said. “I tested them out on my friends, and by the end of the week, I had five minutes and I had word-for-word how I wanted the joke to come off … Then I stood there with the mic in front of me, and I literally read [off] my phone.”
Since then, Porino has become a regular at Pfund’s mic and keeps a running list of funny thoughts on her phone. Her signature joke is about how she is a tax preparer and how she once was a caregiver of two elderly women who have died. “So, I don’t recommend my services,” she said, deadpanning.
Stand-up comedian Adine Porino displays her notes app list of jokes on her phone.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
The energy is refreshing in a different way for Elle McGovern, a 62-year-old restaurant manager who came to comedy after pursuing an acting career. Compared to acting, McGovern found that in comedy “you don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be anything. You just have to be funny.”
McGovern, a regular face at Tao Comedy Studio, describes comedy classes as a workout, but instead of making gains, she’s healing childhood wounds.
For example, in one of her jokes, she teases herself for once drawing one of her eyebrows on way too high. The joke begins with poking fun at how she constantly looked inquisitive. But after working the joke over time, McGovern was able to connect her missing eyebrow to a childhood hurt: “It went out for a smoke and never came back, just like my dad.”
“Just saying out loud some of the things that were hurtful about childhood, the pain goes away and you realize everybody has stuff,” she said.
Mary Pease, 75, started stand-up after a period of feeling “lost.”
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Mary Pease, who refers to herself as a “vintage classic,” found a similar release through comedy. At the time, she was grappling with the dissolution of her 35-year marriage.
“I was really confused about life,” the 75-year-old said. “Where do I go now? I’ve already had the marriage. I’ve already had the children. I already had a good career.”
It was her adult son who suggested Pease go to a comedy club because she had always liked comedians. Pease got $5 tickets to a show at the Nitecap, a comedy club in Burbank, where she was introduced to Genesis Sol, a young comedian who, at the time, was running her all-women’s mic Witty Titties at the club.
“That changed my life,” said Pease, who was invigorated by the excitement and hope of the young comics around her. Since then, Sol said she’s become the oldest regular at Witty Titties. In her signature storytelling style, Pease relays tragically funny memories about her childhood in rural Arkansas.
“Going to [Witty Titties] totally made me stop using the words ‘I’m divorced.’ I’m retired. It was a good game. I got four Super Bowl rings,” she said referring to her four children. “We still celebrated.”
Stand-up comedians Mary Pease, left, Mary Huth and Patricia Resnick.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Laughing at herself has helped McGovern feel more secure during a time of her life when she said society would otherwise render her “obsolete.”
“I love having people laugh at me. That’s a great feeling,” McGovern said. “But I think, for me, it’s more the journey of it, the spirituality of it.”
“It’s giving me a new lease on life, because it gives me something that I love to do, that expresses my creativity and my art, and I can be fulfilled without having a financial reward from it,” she said.
Ware, the 80-year-old comic who writes jokes daily, said she would have been interested in a comedy career if she were younger, but she accepts the reality of her situation.
“I’m headed for the coffin. I’m not headed for the big stage,” she said.
Regardless, every morning Ware can be found on her couch next to her cats and dog as she comes up with her next punchline.
“I quit comedy every day,” she said. “Ah, I’m not going to do this. It’s too hard. I’m tired of thinking of jokes. And all I have to do is think of one joke, and I’m back in.”
Susan Ware, left, has been performing for more than 10 years, while Adine Porino started stand-up just five months ago.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
You want to know where men’s fashion is heading? Follow the geeks.
These are the obsessives, fixated, with a NASA technician’s precision, on how their pants fit or on which pair of Paraboot shoes is the correct pair. These are the obsessives who in the aughts were early to selvage denim (now available at a Uniqlo near you!) and soft-shouldered Italian tailoring in the mode that, eventually, trickled down to your local J. Crew.
And where has the attention of this cohort landed now? On a vanguard of newish-to-the-West labels from Japan, like A.Presse, Comoli, Auralee and T.T.
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A.Presse is probably the most hyped of this cohort. What other label is worn by the French soccer player Pierre Kalulu and the actor Cooper Hoffman and has men paying a premium for a hoodie on the resale market? Kazuma Shigematsu, the founder, is not into attention. When we spoke, he wouldn’t allow me to record the conversation. Notes only.
“You mean a better-fitting denim jacket that’s based on an old Levi’s thing? Yeah, OK, sold,” said Jeremy Kirkland, host of the “Blamo!” podcast and the textbook definition of a latter-day Japanese men’s wear guy. Mr. Kirkland, once someone who would allocate his budget to Italian suits, admitted that, recently, over the course of two weeks, he bought four (yes, four) jackets from A.Presse1.
“I’m not really experimenting with my style anymore,” Mr. Kirkland said. “I’m just wanting really good, basic stuff.”
Basic though these clothes appear, their hook is that they’re opulent to the touch, elevated in their fabrication.
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Over the years, the designer Ryota Iwai has told me repeatedly that he is inspired by nothing more than the people he sees on his commute to the Auralee offices in Tokyo. When asked recently if he collected anything, he said nothing — just his bicycle.
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The true somber tale of this wave. The brand’s founder, Taiga Takahashi, died of an arrhythmia in 2022 at 27. The label has continued to plumb history for inspiration. The latest collection had pieces that drew on bygone American postal-worker uniforms.
An Auralee2 bomber looks pedestrian until you touch it and realize its silk. Labels like T.T3 make clothes that echo the specs of a vintage relic yet come factory fresh, notched up, made … well, better. They bestow upon the wearer a certain in-the-know authority.
And so there is a hobbyist giddiness present on Discord channels where 30- and 40-something men trade tips on how to size moleskin trousers by the Japanese label Comoli; at boutiques like Neighbour in Vancouver, British Columbia, where items like a $628 dusty pink trucker jacket from Yoko Sakamoto and an $820 T.T sweater sell out soon after hitting the sales floor.
What’s notable is how swiftly these geeky preferences have wiggled into the broader fashion community. While I was in Paris for the men’s fashion shows a year ago January, all anyone wanted to talk about were things with a “Made in Japan” tag. I would speak with editors who were carving out room in their suitcases for Auralee’s $3,000 leather jackets.
But these were clothes being shown away from the fashion week hordes. The A.Presse showroom was on a Marais side street in a space about as long as a bowling lane and scarcely wider that was crammed with racks of canvas, silk and denim jackets with Pollock-like paint splatters. There were leather jackets as plush as Roche Bobois sofas and hoodies based on sweatshirts made in America a half-century ago.
I got the hype. After 10 days of puzzling over newfangled stuff on the runways, the display of simple, understandable shapes we’ve known our whole lives, but redone with extra care, couldn’t have felt more welcome.
Kazuma Shigematsu, the A.Presse designer, said he had collected a trove of vintage pieces that he housed in a separate space to plumb for inspiration. He made new clothes based on old clothes that benefited from a century of small design tweaks.
By this January, A.Presse had upgraded to a regal maison facing the Place des Vosges, with giant windows and even more reverent hoodies, even more tender leathers. Back in America, I asked an online department store executive what his favorite thing from Paris was. He took out his phone to show me photos of himself trying on a zip-up leather jacket in A.Presse’s high-ceilinged showroom.
On Their Own Terms
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“We never think about trendiness or popular design details,” Ms. Sakamoto said through a translator. “It’s more like functionality, everyday use.” The label has a thing for natural dyes: pants stained with persimmon tannin, yellow ochre and sumi ink, shirts colored with mugwort and adzuki beans.
The sudden popularity of these labels outside Japan can make it feel as if they are new. Yet each label has built a respectable business within Japan, some for more than a decade. Auralee was founded in 2015. A year later, Yoko Sakamoto4 started its line. A.Presse is the relative baby of this cohort at five years old.
“A couple years ago, we would have to buy off the line sheet or go to Japan and see everything,” said Saager Dilawri, the owner of Neighbour, who has an instinct for what spendy, creative types lust after. “Now I think everyone from Japan is trying to go to Paris to get into the international market.”
This movement’s “Beatles on Ed Sullivan” moment occurred in 2018, when Auralee won the Fashion Prize of Tokyo, granting the designer, Ryota Iwai, financial support. Soon after, Auralee was given a slot on the Paris Fashion Week calendar.
“I had never seen a show before, never thought to do it,” Mr. Iwai said through a translator in February, days after his latest runway show. He has now done five.
As we talked, buyers speaking different languages entered his storefront showroom and ventured upstairs to scrutinize items like a trench coat that looked as if it was made of corduroy but was actually made from cashmere and wool and an MA-1 bomber jacket with a feathery merino wool lining peeking out along the placket.
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The Cale designer Yuki Sato travels throughout Japan to find textiles. Unusually, the company manufactures everything, including leather and denim, in one factory.
At Cale’s5 display off Place Vendôme, the designer Yuki Sato described denim trousers and pocketed work jackets as “modest, but perfectionist.” On the other side of the city, at Soshi Otsuki, whose 11-year-old label Soshiotsuki has gained attention for its warped vision of salary-man suits, I encountered buyers from Kith, a New York streetwear emporium better known for selling logoed hoodies and sell-out sneakers than for tailoring.
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Nearly a decade into its existence, Soshiotsuki has hit a hot streak. Soshi Otsuki won the LVMH Prize in 2025, and he already has a Zara collaboration under his belt. An Asics collaboration is set to arrive in stores soon.
Talking through translators with these designers, I began to worry that it might be unfair to group them together simply because they were all from Japan. Auralee simmers with colors as lush as a Matisse canvas, while Comoli’s brightest shade is brown. Soshiotsuki6 has mastered tailoring, while Orslow is known for its faded-at-the-knee jeans channeling decades-old Levi’s.
Rather, as with the Antwerp Six design clique that sprung out of Belgium in the early 1980s, it is these labels’ origin stories that thread them together.
“They’re being encountered on their own terms and respected on their own account, and they happen to be Japanese,” said W. David Marx, the author of “Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style” and a cultural critic who has lived in Tokyo for more than two decades.
“It is a new era of Japanese fashion on the global stage,” Mr. Marx said.
A Love Affair With Japan
Western shoppers have a history of falling hard for clothes from Japan. In 1981, when Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto crashed onto the Paris fashion scene, buyers swooned for their brainy, body-shrouding creations.
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Recently reintroduced as Number(N)ine by Takahiro Miyashita.
Years later, Number(N)ine7 and A Bathing Ape synthesized trends we would call American — grunge, streetwear and hip-hop — polished them up and sold them back to the West.
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Years before American men were trawling the internet for A.Presse, they would scour forums for deals on Visvim’s jeans and sneakers. Today, Visvim has stores in Santa Fe, N.M.; Carmel, Calif.; and Los Angeles.
Into the 2000s, clothing geeks were swapping tips on forums like Superfuture and Hypebeast about how to use a Japanese proxy service to buy Visvim’s8 seven-eyelet leather work boots or SugarCane’s brick-thick jeans.
Along the way, “Made in Japan” became a shorthand for “made well.” This was more than fetishization. As America’s clothing factories became empty carcasses pockmarking the heartland, Japan’s apparel industry grew steroidal.
“Japan still has an incredible manufacturing base for apparel that goes all the way from the textiles to the sewing to the postproduction,” Mr. Marx said.
Today, many Japanese labels produce most of their garments and, crucially, their textiles in Japan. When I first met Mr. Iwai years ago, I asked how he managed to create such lush colors. He answered, as if noting that the sky was blue, that he worked with the factories that developed his fabrics. As I spoke with Mr. Sato in January, he shared that Cale’s factory had been in his family for generations and also produced for other Japanese brands that I would know.
Chris Green, the owner of Ven. Space, a boutique in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn that has helped to introduce a number of these labels to an American market, suggested that because Japan is a small country with a fervent fashion culture, a competitive spirit has been stoked.
“They have to be able to cut through the noise,” Mr. Green said, with brands trying to prove that their cashmere sweater can outclass their peers’, that their silks are sourced from finer factories. What’s more, he said, once these brands have nailed a design, they stick with it. That is something that is important to men, in particular, who hate when a brand abandons its favored pants after a season.
Before he opened Ven. Space in 2024, Mr. Green was an admirer of many of these labels, purchasing them during trips to Japan. As we spoke, he was wearing a pair of Comoli belted jeans that he bought five or so years ago. A similar style is still available.
Primed for What They Were Pitching
At the close of the 2010s, streetwear was running on fumes. Quiet luxury was entering at stage left. If the Row and Loro Piana were expert at subtle, fine-to-the-touch clothes, so, too, were the likes of T.T, Graphpaper and Yoko Sakamoto.
“I went from this guy that wears pear-shaped pants to just wearing, like, a denim jacket,” said Chris Maradiaga, a tech worker and freelance writer in Vancouver. His wardrobe today consists of Comoli’s black-as-night trousers and a purple-tinged coat by Ssstein. His kaleidoscopic Bode jackets gather dust.
That Ssstein clothes have landed in the closets of men on the other side of the world defies the early guidance relayed to Kiichiro Asakawa, the label’s bushy-haired designer. His “senpais,” or mentors, warned him that his reduced designs might leave Western audiences cold. “You need something powerful,” they told him.
He tried, but it wasn’t necessary. It’s the most minimal designs — his cotton gabardine zip-ups, his “easy” pleated trousers — that people are most interested in now. “It actually makes me very happy,” he said through a translator. “My instincts were right.” Mr. Asakawa won the Fashion Prize of Tokyo in 2024.
Adapting to North American Markets (and Men)
Several Japanese designers noted that they had modified their sizing to accommodate larger, American bodies.
“I’ll ask them, Can you lengthen the pants by three centimeters? Because you need that for the Western market,” Mr. Dilawri of Neighbour said, noting that the designers were receptive to those requests.
A number of labels, like Comoli and Soshiotsuki, are already oversize. That’s the look.
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Kiichiro Asakawa ran a Tokyo boutique, Carol, before starting Ssstein in 2016. It’s still there. He, too, said he found inspiration in the everyday, for example when watching an elderly couple have dinner across a restaurant.
There is also the matter of price. On the whole, these clothes are not cheap. See Auralee’s silk bomber jacket, which could be military surplus but feels stolen from a sultan’s palace. It’s roughly $1,700. Ssstein’s9 Carhartt cousin chore jacket with a cowhide collar and a factory-massaged fade? About $1,000. Anyone who has traveled recently in Japan, where the yen is tantalizingly weak, will tell you that these Japanese-made clothes, after being imported, are far pricier in North America.
Yet, as luxury fashion labels continue to price out the aspirational middle-class shopper, many of those same shoppers have convinced themselves that the Japanese labels are a better value. A cashmere coat at Prada is $10,000, and you’ll need $1,690 to own a cotton-blend cardigan from Margiela. Similar pieces from Japanese labels can be half that price, or less.
“Brands like Bottega, Balenciaga, the Row — all that stuff — are so unobtainable,” said Mr. Kirkland, whose clothing budget has shifted to A.Presse. “I will never be in that price bracket,” he added, “but I’m wealthy enough to buy a chore coat for $800.”
Of course, Mr. Kirkland and all of the fans of these labels could own a chore coat for far less — but then it wouldn’t be “Made in Japan.”
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