Fashion Industry and Popular Brands
Although Japanese street fashion is known for its mix-match of different styles and genres, and there is no single sought-after brand that can consistently appeal to all fashion groups, the huge demand created by the fashion-conscious population is fed and supported by Japan's vibrant fashion industry. Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo of the Comme des Garçons are often said to be the three cornerstone brands of Japanese fashion. Together they were particularly recognized as a Japanese fashion force in the early 80s for their intensive use of monochrome color and cutting-edge design.
As early as the 1950s, there were a few brands specially catered to street fashion, like Onitsuka Tiger (now known as the ASICS), but arguably it was until the early 1990s that the industry saw a blooming emergence of street fashion brands. The most popular ones include: A Bathing Ape, Comme des Garçons, Evisu, Head Porter, OriginalFake, Uniqlo, Visvim, W)TAPs, and XLarge. Street Fashion brands frequently feature collaborations with popular artists and designers and use limited edition as a selling strategy. There are also brands that target specific fashion groups. For example, Angelic Pretty is for Lolita style and Sex Pot Revenge for Punk style.
Japan is also known for its significant consumption of foreign luxury brands. According to data from 2006, Japan consumed 41 percent of the entire world's luxury goods. The blue line of Burberry is among the most successful in this arena.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Fashion
Famous quotes containing the words fashion, industry, popular and/or brands:
“Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)