Lifestyle
How to get an inside look at gorgeous private gardens in and around L.A.
With all the recent rain, 2024 is shaping up to be a fabulous year for flowers, not just in the wild but also in private gardens around Southern California. Lucky for garden enviers, many of those gates will be opening wide this spring as part of the annual fundraising tradition known as garden tours.
They come in all shapes and sizes, from the Theodore Payne Foundation’s two-day opportunity to admire more than 30 native plant landscapes across Los Angeles to more intimate events that include just a few exquisite gardens, such as the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tours in the San Fernando Valley and Pasadena.
These tours will fill weekends through May, so you’ll always find someplace to go, and the entry prices are usually modest — typically less than $40 per person, and sometimes even free, although in those cases, such as the annual open house at Prisk Elementary School’s Native Plant Garden, donations to these worthy causes are greatly appreciated.
Grab a friend, a water bottle and a hat, don good walking shoes and prepare to enjoy all the beauty that follows a good California downpour and the hard work of creative gardeners. If we’ve forgotten someone, please email jeanette.marantos@latimes.com to see if it’s an event we can include.
April 6
Mediterranean Garden Society of Southern California Garden Tour of a private garden in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, 10 a.m. to noon. Designers Marilee Kuhlmann, Tom Rau and Johanna Woollcott will be on hand to discuss the 2-acre project, which includes water harvesting, fire prevention, fruit trees, a vegetable garden, native and water-wise plants and a succulent garden. Tickets are $35 ($25 for members). mediterraneangardensociety.org/branches-us-cal-south.html
A Swallowtail butterfly rests on Apricot Mallow at Prisk Native Plant Garden in Long Beach.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
April 7 and 14
The Prisk Native Plant Garden Open House features a free visit to the native plant garden usually closed to the public. From 1 to 4 p.m. both days at William F. Prisk Elementary School, 2375 Fanwood Ave. in Long Beach. The garden is behind the school, at East Los Arcos Street and Albury Avenue. facebook.com/prisknativegarden
An oasis of native plants grows at Raul Rojas and Thomas Zamora’s 1923 Highland Park bungalow, part of the Theodore Payne Foundation’s annual native plant garden tour.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
April 13-14
The Theodore Payne Foundation Native Plant Garden Tour features 41 gardens around Los Angeles devoted to at least 50% native plants. Ticket holders get a map for self-guided tours to gardens on the Westside of L.A. on April 13 and the Eastside on April 14, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. One ticket gets you into all the gardens on both days and provides an opportunity to see gardens for larger spaces as well as residences, including Kuruvungna Village Springs, Casa Apocalyptica, Garden Butterfly, Washington Elementary Native Habitat Garden and the Gottlieb Native Garden. Participants will receive a map in the mail once they purchase their tickets for $55 (children under 16 do not need tickets). nativeplantgardentour.org
The Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium and L.A. Garden Tours by the Garden Conservancy involves a symposium from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 13 examining how Wright and other early 20th century architects responded to Southern California’s landscape and climate, followed April 14 with guided tours of Wright’s Hollyhock House and Garden in East Hollywood from 10 a.m. to noon and a tour of the Rudolph Schindler House & garden in West Hollywood from 10 a.m. to noon or 2 to 4 p.m. Garden tours are $30 each and reserved only to people who attend the symposium on April 13. Tickets for the symposium at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre are $175 ($150 for members, $50 for students). gardenconservancy.org
April 14
The Creative Arts Group Art of the Garden Tour includes self-guided tours of five gardens in Pasadena and Sierra Madre from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $40, or $45 if purchased the day of the tour. The tour is the biggest annual fundraiser for the nonprofit group, which provides programs, exhibitions and classes in the arts for children and adults. Executive Director Gwen Robertson said the tour strives to include at least one “gobsmacker” estate along with more modest but still inspiring landscapes created by local designers. Photography, pets and children under 12 are not permitted on the tours. The Creative Arts Group Gallery will be open at 108 N. Baldwin Ave. in Sierra Madre for people who want to purchase tickets in person and view work by more than 25 local artists. creativeartsgroup.org
Water-wise desert gardens will be on display at the Morongo Basin Conservation Assn. Desert-Wise Landscape Tour.
(Stacy Doolittle)
April 21
The Morongo Basin Conservation Assn. Desert-Wise Landscape Tour is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event features six self-guided tours of water-wise Morongo Basin landscapes in Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, along with docent-guided visits to the Mojave Desert Land Trust. Tickets are $15 ($10 for members) and can be purchased online. The website also features videos of “desert-wise” landscapes from past tours. mbconservation.org
The Garden Conservancy Pasadena Open Days Tour invites you to explore three elaborate private gardens at historic homes — the Schumacher Garden Retreat and Bennett-DeBeixedon Garden in Pasadena and the Absacal Family Garden in Altadena. Tickets are $10 per garden and available online only. Children 12 and under enter free with an accompanying adult. gardenconservancy.org
Cottage roses like these are among some of the sights to be seen at a self-guided tour of pollinator gardens in Redlands.
(Bob Ellis)
April 27-28
The Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society Garden Tour: Pollinators Paradise — Gardens in Bloom features six private pollinator gardens and the student garden at the Grove School in Redlands. The self-guided tours are available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. The society also is hosting a plant sale at 1352 Prospect Drive on Saturday only from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tour maps are provided with tickets, which are $15 (children 13 and younger enter free) and can be purchased with cash or check at the Grove School and some local retailers. redlandsgardenclub.org
Riverside Community Flower Show & Garden Tour: Garden Friends With Benefits, a celebration of native pollinators, with self-guided tours of six Riverside-area gardens that demonstrate how to attract pollinators. The tours run between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. both days, along with a free flower show from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Riverside Elks Lodge, 6166 Brockton Ave., with floral displays, crafts and garden art for sale. A wristband for admission to the garden tours is $10; children under 16 enter free. riversideflowershow.com
The 31st Floral Park Home & Garden Tour in North Santa Ana features tours of historic homes and gardens from the 1920s to the 1950s from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. The tour also includes a vintage automobile display, food from local restaurants and shopping opportunities. Proceeds support community scholarships and nonprofit organizations. Tickets for the tour are $45 if purchased online by April 22, $50 on the day of the event. floralparkhometour.com
The backyard home garden of Michael Solverb and Khoi Pham, featured in this year’s San Fernando Valley Open Days garden tours.
(Yuri Hasegawa / For The Times)
April 28
The Garden Conservancy San Fernando Valley Open Days Tour will showcase three elaborate private gardens at historic homes — the Wrightwood Estates Hillside Garden and the Sustainable Storybook Garden in Studio City and Longridge in Sherman Oaks. Tickets are $10 per garden and available online only. Children 12 and under enter free with an accompanying adult. gardenconservancy.org
May 4-5
The Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour features self-guided tours of 38 gardens from Long Beach to San Clemente from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. A list of the gardens and their addresses is on the Mary Lou Heard Foundation website, but plan ahead because some are open to visitors on only one of the days. The tour is free but donation jars will be set out at the gardens to support the Sheepfold, a crisis center for women and children in Orange that has long been the beneficiary of the foundation’s annual tours. heardsgardentour.com
May 4
Los Angeles Flower Farm Tour, a free self-guided tour of nine small flower farms in urban Los Angeles from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. A map will be sent to people who register online to visit Frogtown Flora, Allie Cat flowers, Golden Heron, Drive by Flora, Bloomtown Flower Co., Mamabotanica, Pia Flora Design, Flowerbox Studios and Rose Lane Farms. The farm owners will be selling fresh bouquets, U-pick flowers and other related items during the tour day, so visitors are encouraged to bring a bucket of water to keep their flowers fresh as they make their tour. partiful.com
The Laguna Beach Garden Club 19th Gate & Garden Tour begins at the Laguna Beach County Water District’s Bruce Scherer Waterwise and Fire-Safe Gardens at 306 3rd St. in Laguna Beach, with special buses shuttling ticket holders to tours of several area gardens. Mexican fare and artisanal margaritas will be available for purchase; also look for free homemade baked goods. Artists will be painting canvases in several gardens, and visitors wearing a “festive garden party hat” will be entered in the tour’s hat contest. Proceeds support school gardens, local scholarships and community projects, such as the new bee mural at the water district, painted by artist Matt Willey as part of his the Good of the Hive initiative to raise awareness about the importance of pollinators. Garden tours run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m, with the last entry scheduled at 2 p.m. Children are not permitted. Timed-entry tickets purchased by April 28 are $60 or $80 for entry anytime between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., along with tickets for one food item and one drink. lagunabeachgardenclub.org
Nine home gardens will be on display in View Park and Ladera Heights as part of the Blooms With a View Spring Garden Tour.
(Felicia Smith)
May 5
Blooms With a View Spring Garden Tour, sponsored by Inspired Garden Artistry, celebrates its 11th biennial tour and vendor fair at nine home gardens in View Park and Ladera Heights from noon to 5 p.m. The fair will be at the southern entrance of Ladera Park, 4750 W. 62nd St., in the View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood of South L.A. The tour includes a waterfall, a rose garden, fruit trees, a Zen garden and an outdoor art studio with a 37-foot mosaic storybook wall. Tickets can be purchased online until April 15 for $30; $35 if purchased after April 15 or on the day of the event at the park. inspiredgardenartistry.com
The 2024 Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Assn. & Hospice Camarillo Garden Tour features art exhibits and demonstrations, live music, refreshments and a garden-themed boutique in addition to tours of five Camarillo gardens from noon to 4 p.m. Artists from the Pastel Society of the Gold Coast will give demonstrations at each garden. Tickets are $30 online. Proceeds benefit the association’s hospice program in Camarillo. lmvna.org
May 11
West Floral Park and Jack Fisher Park Neighborhoods Open Garden Day features at least eight tours in two tree-lined neighborhoods of vintage homes in North Santa Ana, along with live music, art displays, garden talks and demonstrations, a classic car display, free bottled water at the gardens, coffee and doughnuts available for purchase in the morning and vendors selling food and garden products from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Tours are 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with a shuttle service between the two loops of tours to minimize wait times.) Ticket sales begin March 19 online for $20, or $25 if purchased the day of the event, at West Santa Clara and North Westwood avenues in Santa Ana. opengardenday.com
May 16
The 27th Newport Harbor Home & Garden Tour features tours at seven locally designed homes and gardens near Newport Harbor High School between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., along with a morning reception at 9 a.m., luncheon between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and online specialty boutique of home decor and accessories between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The event is a fundraiser for the Newport Harbor Educational Foundation to support academic programs and faculty at Newport Harbor High School. Tickets can be purchased online for $110 ($125 after April 26, if still available). newportharborhometour.com
One of many gardens you can check out on the San Clemente Garden Club 2024 Garden Tour.
(Kim Neal)
May 18
San Clemente Garden Club 2024 Garden Tour features self-guided tours and live entertainment at five San Clemente-area gardens from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online before the event for $35 ($30 each if purchasing four or more). Day-of tickets are $45 and must be purchased in person, at a location that will be announced on the website on May 17. Proceeds support the San Clemente Garden Club College Scholarship and Junior Gardeners programs as well as conservation organization and civic beautification projects in San Clemente. sanclementegardenclub.com
The Tustin Area Historical Society 25th Old Town Tustin Home and Garden Tour includes tours of the community’s vintage homes and gardens from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., along with maypole dancing, artists painting, live music, horse-drawn trolleys and vendors selling garden-related merchandise. Tickets can be purchased online or at the Tustin Area Museum in Tustin for $40 in advance, $45 on the day of the event. tustinhistory.com
See inside three private gardens not typically open to the public at Virginia Robinson Gardens.
(Josh Johnston)
Virginia Robinson Gardens 35th Spring Rhapsody Garden Tour includes three of the historic estate’s private gardens not normally open to the public, along with tours of the house decked out in floral arrangements, live music, a catered luncheon on the great lawn, a silent auction and an on-site marketplace, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Beverly Hills. Purchase tickets online for $350, as well as valet parking for $50. robinsongardens.org
May 19
The Rossmoor Woman’s Club 19th Garden Tour features self-guided tours of five private gardens in the Rossmoor-Los Alamitos area of Orange County, just north of Seal Beach, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event also includes tours of two elementary school gardens cultivated by students and their mentors from the Orange County Master Gardeners program. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online in April or, on the day of the tour, at the club’s outdoor marketplace, featuring music, food, craft and plant sales in Arbor Village, 10651 Los Alamitos Blvd. in Los Alamitos. Net proceeds from the tours support local charities and college scholarships for Los Alamitos High School students. rossmoorwomansclub.org
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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