Lifestyle
These pop-ups, drops and art events got you covered for spring
Miss Dior Avenue pop-up comes to West Hollywood
(Christian Dior Parfums / Marc Patrick/BFA.com)
Sometimes you need a 1960s-inspired style adventure. You’re in luck thanks to the new immersive Miss Dior Avenue experience that has popped up this week on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. ( The pop-up event isn’t too far from the Pacific Design Center and the WeHo park where Elton John AIDS Foundation’s annual Academy Awards viewing party will be held Sunday.)
In the colorful Miss Dior space, visitors will find a La Parfumerie celebration of the new Miss Dior Parfum, which was created by brand perfume creative director Francis Kurkdjian and has floral, fruity and woody notes. (The original Miss Dior perfume from designer Christian Dior dates back to 1947.) Also, guests will get a chance to check out the Miss Dior campaign starring Natalie Portman at the Diorama Cinema or have a snack at the Miss Dior cafe before venturing back into the world. There also will be exclusives and goodies as well as a special Miss Dior flower shop — a tribute to the love of flowers that Dior and his sister Catherine shared. Make a reservation soon, because this pop-up is only from Friday morning through Sunday evening. 8626 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, dior.com
Saks Fifth Avenue opens women’s store in Beverly Hills
(Peter Christiansen Valli / Saks Fifth Avenue)
Still miss the old Barneys New York space in Beverly Hills and its Regency-style marble staircase? Well, you’re in luck. Luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, a longtime staple of Wilshire Boulevard, moved its women’s store to the space at 9570 Wilshire Blvd. Called a reimagined West Coast flagship, this revived building is stocked with well-known luxury labels (think McQueen, Loewe, Celine, Brunello Cucinelli, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino and Dries van Noten), beauty items, footwear and goods from emerging designers spread over 130,000 square feet of space. Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci and Chanel have dedicated main boutiques in the store. As a bonus, there’s an expanded Fifth Avenue Club with an outdoor terrace. 9570 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, saks.com
Burberry pop-up lands at South Coast Plaza
The revered British brand is settling into a stateside visit at luxury shopping center South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. This interactive pop-up, billed as a celebration of the brand’s heritage, offers a showcase of new clothes and bags as well as the beloved trench coat, including new styles in checks and prints from Chief Creative Officer Daniel Lee’s Spring 2024 collection. Shoppers at this Orange County event will find Burberry’s tent-like, outdoor-inspired setting along with furniture that takes its cues from camping. The pop-up is open through March 14. 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, burberry.com, southcoastplaza.com
Jaime Muñoz solo exhibition and capsule collection with Huf
L.A.-born artist Jaime Muñoz’s solo exhibition, “The Meaning Is the End,” at John Doe Gallery explores commodity and consumerism as well as the effects of modernity through a series of diagram drawings that look like auto repair manuals. To commemorate the exhibition’s opening, Muñoz and the L.A. skate and streetwear brand Huf, the exhibition presenter, dropped a new capsule collection, including a hat, T-shirt, short-sleeve shirt and sweater. The pieces are available through Huf’s website. The exhibition is open through April 7. 107 E. 11th St., Los Angeles, johndoegallery.com
Prada Mode presents the Double Club Los Angeles
This weekend, artist Carsten Höller will indulge the minds of visitors at a private club escape, the Double Club Los Angeles, in the Arts District inside the warehouse complex occupied by the Drake-backed amusement park exhibition, “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy.” (On a side note, Höller, who’s known for his experimental installations and sculptures, visited the original Luna Luna art amusement park featuring the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Sonia Delaunay, David Hockney and others in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987.)
This exclusive downtown L.A. event is presented by contemporary cultural series Prada Mode in partnership with Luna Luna, and will focus on Höller’s “signature tropes” such as “the principle of division and the machinery of fun within carnival aesthetics,” according to a media release. During their visit, guests will be able to interact with nine individual spaces as part of the Double Club, which originally opened in 2008 in London, commissioned by Fondazione Prada. March 9 and 10. Ace Six, 516 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles. Admission to the Double Club Los Angeles is free with the purchase of a Luna Luna ticket.
‘Scratching at the Moon’ comes to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
During the summer of 2020, L.A.-based sculptor Anna Sew Hoy started dreaming about an exhibition of Asian American artists with ties to L.A., and that eventually led to a new exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Dubbed the first focused survey of Asian American artists in a major contemporary Los Angeles museum, “Scratching at the Moon” is a celebration of the work of an intergenerational group of 13 artists who were born in the United States or who emigrated from Asia, New Zealand and Canada. They are Patty Chang, Young Chung, Vishal Jugdeo, Simon Leung, Michelle Lopez, Yong Soon Min, Na Mira, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miljohn Ruperto, Dean Sameshima, Amy Yao, Bruce Yonemoto and Sew Hoy. Through May 12. 1717 E. 7th St., Los Angeles, theicala.org
‘Karla Diaz: Wait ’til Your Mother Gets Home’ opens
‘No Te Metas Con Mi Cucu (Don’t mess with my ass),’ 2022 watercolor and ink on paper.
(Karla Diaz / 18th Street Arts Center)
“Wait ’til Your Mother Gets Home,” which is on display at 18th Street Arts Gallery’s Propeller Gallery, is an exploration of American Mexican identity from the 1970s through today via the paper and canvas work of artist Karla Diaz. Called her first institutional solo exhibition in Greater L.A., the exhibition features 37 of the writer, teacher and multidisciplinary artist’s new and recent works. At the heart of the exhibition is “The Silver Dollar” (2021), a work on paper that commemorates Ruben Salazar, the L.A. Times reporter and columnist — the city’s leading Latino media voice — who was killed in August 1970 when a sheriff’s deputy shot a projectile into East L.A. bar the Silver Dollar. Through June 22. 3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, 18thstreet.org
Fashion brand 424 opens a new flagship store
One thing is clear: Menswear designer Guillermo Andrade, founder and creative director of L.A. label 424, wanted a new retail space that would get people talking and posting on social media. The first thing you’ll notice about 424’s newly minted flagship is that it looks as if the cave-like space, with clothes neatly hanging on racks made from industrial beams and footwear placed on floating shelves throughout, came from a postapocalyptic subterrane in a “Blade Runner”-style Los Angeles. The store is a return to an actual physical space for the streetwear brand, which had a Fairfax Avenue space from 2010 to late 2022. 8441 Melrose Place, Los Angeles, fourtwofour.com
The Frankie Shop opens West Hollywood pop-up experience
High-fashion label the Frankie Shop has collaborated with product and architectural design studio Crosby Studios in a pop-up experience called the Meeting Room, at 8580 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. The space pays tribute to a bygone era, taking inspiration from “powerful women of the post-office age,” according to a press release. Here you’ll find the Frankie Shop’s latest collection of leather goods and exclusive items set up in a space that looks like the remnants of a once-bustling office. (Think stacks of binders, monitors, office chairs and a broken printer and water coolers.) To commemorate the collab, a new campaign called “The Frankie Shop Goes to Hollywood,” features actor Demi Moore in photos by artist and photographer Collier Schorr. 8580 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, thefrankieshop.com
June Edmonds at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
(June Edmonds / Luis De Jesus Los Angeles)
Black strength, endurance, joy and harmony are all qualities found in L.A.-born artist June Edmonds’ work. In her new exhibition, “Meditations on African Resilience,” Edmonds takes a deeper look at the river leaf emblem, a sacred quatrefoil used as a spiritual symbol (unity, balance and protection) as well as a symbol for “the power and regality of kings, healers and deities” in the Kingdom of Benin in what’s now southern Nigeria. Pay attention to the “deep color,” as Edmonds calls it, used to tap “into a part of our psyche linked to an ancient memory that exists within all of us.” Through April 13. 1110 Mateo St., Los Angeles, luisdejesus.com
S.R. Studio. LA. CA. for OTW by Vans collaborate on new sneakers
Having collaborated with designer Raf Simons and fashion brand Calvin Klein, artist Sterling Ruby isn’t a stranger to fashion. His own label, S.R. Studio. LA. CA., debuted in 2019, and now Ruby is the first collaborator for Costa Mesa-based brand Vans’ new premium line called OTW by Vans. With this new collab titled Clash the Wall, there’s a bold mash-up of four Vans iconic styles — the Style 36, the Authentic, the Mid Skool ’77 and the Sk8-Hi — in full-on neon green and an orange reminiscent of Crush soda, both signature S.R. colors. The sneakers, part of an extended partnership between S.R. and Vans, are $160, and the green version can be purchased at kith.com.
‘At the Edge of the Sun’ at Jeffrey Deitch
(Joshua and Charles White)
Twelve artists who have known each other through artistic discourse as well as just living, working, surviving and thriving in Los Angeles were brought together for “At the Edge of the Sun” exhibition at Deitch. Focusing on landmarks, memories and communities, the artists take us on a year-in-the-making exploration of the complex realities of life today in L.A.: underground economies, surveillance, youth culture, California landscapes, public transportation, night life and more. The artists are Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Michael Alvarez, Mario Ayala, Karla Ekaterine Canseco, rafa esparza, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., Ozzie Juarez, Maria Maea, Jaime Muñoz, Guadalupe Rosales, Gabriela Ruiz and Shizu Saldamando. Through May 4. 925 N. Orange Drive, Los Angeles, deitch.com
‘RETROaction (part two)’ pays homage to 1993 exhibition in downtown L.A.
“Twenty Five Candles,” 1993, 25 color Polaroid prints. © Lorna Simpson and Hauser & Wirth
(Timothy Doyon)
The new exhibition “RETROaction (part two)” revisits and pays homage to the seminal Charles Gaines-led 1993 exhibition “Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism” at UC Irvine, which featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Renée Green, David Hammons and other artists. Not only is this Hauser & Wirth exhibition a showcase for early-1990s works by Gaines, Lorna Simpson and Gary Simmons, who participated in “Theater of Refusal,” but it also has on display the works of 10 artists who were selected by Gaines and art historian Ellen Tani: Edgar Arceneaux, Kevin Beasley, Mark Bradford, Torkwase Dyson, Lauren Halsey, Leslie Hewitt, Rashid Johnson, Caroline Kent, Tony Lewis and Rodney McMillian. Through May 5. 901 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles, hauserwirth.com
Tory Burch and Humberto Leon open new Melrose Avenue concept store
Designer Tory Burch and restaurateur and Opening Ceremony co-founder Humberto Leon recently celebrated their collaboration on a Tory Burch concept store on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. The façade and interior of the new shop feature the work of German photographer Walter Schels, whose animal portraits are featured in Burch’s Resort 2024 collection. In addition to having the initial drop of the Spring 2024 collection, the Melrose store carries a dedicated capsule collection of T-shirts, sweatshirts and totes that were screen-printed with Schels’ portraits of a bunny and a cat. The concept store will be open through the end of 2024 while the Tory Burch flagship on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills is renovated. 8483 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, toryburch.com
Merrick Morton’s exhibition celebrates photographer’s work
“Two Cholas ‘Lisa and Crystal,’” circa 1981.
(Merrick Morton)
The camera of L.A.-born Merrick Morton, the documentary street photographer and film still photographer of more than 90 films, has captured the realities of life from the streets to the sets of films. In “Merrick Morton: Un-Rehearsed” at Eastern Projects art gallery, you’ll find a solo exhibition that shows the barrio and inner city as well as incarcerated people in prisons and the locked wards of a California psychiatric hospital. In the mix on display, there’s a variety of portraits taken in Mexico and Cuba as well as of actors on film sets. As a bonus, there’s a special poetry and photo collaboration with actor-poet Richard Cabral called “Life of a Cholo.” Also, this spring, Morton will release the photography book “Clique: West Coast Portraits From the Hood, 1980-1996” (Hat & Beard Press). March 30 through May 18. 900 N. Broadway, Suite 1090, Los Angeles, easternprojectsgallery.com
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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