fuck you! you pill popping depressed freak!

What is this crap?

This "music" is so mind-numbingly bland, words are failing me at the moment as to how it should be described....

Ugh. Thanks for posting it, along with the backstory.

*sobs*

Wow, that's the fastest flame I've ever received.

It's the greatest autoplay-MIDI-file-on-an-ugly-homepage ever made.

thebittersea - no soliloquies, please.

Oh come on, you know that Villalobos is going to be caning this one all summer long- Not!

Demolishing a church to make way for a fashion emporium seems like a progressive move to me.

I briefly worked with Hiroshi "Hiroshi Desu" Fujiwara on a fashion-related TV show, and he was a disarmingly pleasant, and funny, guy.

You'd have thought that he and the mighty Mori corp would've paid somebody talented for a better job on the composition. Maybe he decided to keep all the loot and do it himself.

Although I view Omotesando Hills as something of a wasted opportunity, I don't believe that it threatens Japan's status as a center for street fashion.

As far as I'm aware, European fashion brands aren't forcing Japanese apparel firms out of business - they're targeting a different market.

The new buildings on Omotesando did not displace any upcoming designers' stores. Those "hipster streetwear shops" are still way off the main drag.

I'd say that the Tokyo fashion scene is in rude health, and attracting ever more attention from overseas buyers.

Where Japanese businesses are suffering, though, is at the low-added-value end of the market, where China is offering far more competitive options at every stage in the production chain.

Although I view Omotesando Hills as something of a wasted opportunity, I don't believe that it threatens Japan's status as a center for street fashion.

Omotesando Hills is more a symptom of the recent changes in Harajuku than a cause. The street fashion brands haven't done much new in five or more years, and no one is interested in fashion that doesn't show exactly how much money you make each year. There's much more grassroots demand for the luxury brands, and with shrinking consumer budgets, that means less thrown out to the street brands.

The reason these Mori buildings are such big deals is that they have no real competition from some other alternate source of consumer culture.

I'd say that the Tokyo fashion scene is in rude health, and attracting ever more attention from overseas buyers.

I have no doubt that there are still plenty of talented and interested designers in the Japanese high-fashion scene. There's just less kids who are going to be wearing it on the actual streets of Harajuku...

hey martin let's meet sometime soon !

dang I've defacated better syntopop than that and I'm a lousy musician. Oh well, it pretty much re-enforces my already negative opinion about Mori.

I had the interesting experience of living just off Omotesando from 97 to 2002. I got to see the tail end of it being a somewhat pleasant area to become full scale consumer hell. I guess Omotesando Hills will be the crown jewel on the road apple.

I'm not sure about this being the beginning of the end for the Harajuku scene, however even if it is, it was only a matter of time. Especially with the likes of Gwen Stefani making the scene cooley for average Westerners, maybe it's time for a change? Not that Roppongi Hills type developments, with their elitism and cost are a fair replacement, but given that this is Tokyo we're talking about I'm sure the scene will just move elsewhere.

You'd think that, right?

whatever fashions it may be housing i tend to view the omotesando hills as a minor triumph of japanese architecture (especially compared to the fat roppongi thing). aside from being a very sensible building it's also a link between classic ando and his roots le corb. etc and the new light generation (sanaa etc) and as such it deserves its location.

I really like this song! It reminds me of Nights Into Dreams.

guh guh guh clap clap ump tiss ow!

Isn't that the same echoey clap from Autechre's Lowride?

compare it to the 'theme song' for my city and its corresponding The District (formerly Historic Downtown): http://www.visitcolumbiamo.com/media/CCVBjingle.mp3

mori -> La Foret -> The forest -> a floresta
Now let's do the same with ueki :p mmm i think i've been seeing too much anime lately :) the power to turn posts into bullshit!

Let's reserve our dismay for when the opposite of everything Marxy deplores here happens: when a Japanese fashion complex / museum is pulled down and replaced by a Christian church, or when some luxury apartments in Roppongi are converted into an air force base. Or even when a chic Ando-designed mall is demolished and replaced by a bunch of tawdry dark ivy-covered buildings featuring uninspiring "galleries" heated by kerosene stoves. All those would mark Japan's "termial" decline much more surely than anything reported here.

That's a cheap rhetorical device you just pulled. I don't think Japanese culture should all be about worshiping wealth and you turn that around to make me a supporter of the American Occupation.

I'm not sure all the Louis Vuitton and Gucci on Omotesando was really what got you interested in Japanese fashion, but hey, if I'm against it, it must be great. Buy yourself a handbag and join the invidious distinctions of collectivism.

Also, I have no real negative opinion about tearing down the Church to make La Foret, but can anyone here imagine Momus supporting the destruction of a Shinto shrine to build a bigger Gap? Moral qualms must be easy when the ends always justify the means.

destruction of a Shinto shrine to build a bigger Gap?

this doesn't hold either. unless you're talking of some iapanischer, orientalischer thing, the shrine would be subtle and supple enough to squeeze its way between the bigger Gap and the big Diesel next to it, or on the roof of the big Gap or so.

As for the Fujiwara music, I don't think it's as bad as all that. It's a sort of naff techno take on classical music, but I think it falls into the category of haunting and tender public music that you hear in Japan: the often stirringly tender "5 o'clock music" played from schools in different districts of Tokyo, the themes that play when "the beloved" (ie a train) enters a station, or the themes that large commercial centers play when they're closing, often accompanied by a Close Encounters-like flashing of the atrium lights. There's something haunting, tender, sentimental and feminine about this sort of public music, and the way it gets used in public contexts is quite unique to Japan.

For comparison, here is a little clip of the closing music played at a big commercial center in Osaka's Tennoji district, while lights sparkle as if the mothership is landing. I'm sure Fujiwara's sub-Beethoven composition will sound just as atmospheric when it's echoing around the halls of Omotesando Hills at closing time.

I forgot: up is down and bad is good.

Obviously there's a social context for this kind of music, but I'm not sure that you have to use General Midi sounds to make atmospheric BGM. Without even getting into gear snobbery, the actual sounds in the piece sound cheap and outmoded. In contrast, train station noises don't sound like they were ever "made" in a studio by someone, but just somehow came into being when the switch was lit one morning.

It is certainly true that ostentatious, status-statement fashion brands have been making a lot of noise and finding an growing audience here in Japan - a phenomenon related to the growing wealth disparity you featured in a recent post.

But your assertion that the street brands have produced nothing interesting for the past four or five years is, in my humble opinion, incorrect.

The implication that this perceived lowering of creative standards comes as a result of the invasion of foreign brands is also groundless.

There is very little overlap between the customer base of Franck Muller or Cartier and that of Bounty Hunter or Under Cover. The fact that ultra high-end brands are finding a growing market for their products does not necessarily make for a decline in the fortunes of the innovative end of the streetwear business - they're not taking slices from the same pie.

The same can be said of Louis Vuitton, Hermes or Gucci - they don't encroach on the market for homegrown labels, especially not the edgy, exciting ones.

It's safe to say that the majority of fashion-forward Japanese consumers are still buying products which are not outwardly (visibly) branded. This is still a firmly anti-logo consumer segment and there are no signs that "the kids" are going to be changing their purchasing patterns anytime soon.

Even in the gyaru market, where luxury imports have traditionally done well, domestic brands like Moussy, Samantha Thavasa and Garcia Marquez have been holding their own against the likes of Coach and LV.

It's wrong to suggest that there is no alternative consumer culture to that offered by the two Hills developments. A casual wander through the backstreets of Harajuku (or Shibuya, or Daikanyama, or Nakameguro) quickly leads to large numbers of stores which offer art, music, books, junk and paradoxical anti-consumer philosophy alongside seemingly unwearable clothing creations. The scene is still thriving.

Other alternate sources of consumer culture in the fashion retail sector would be independent multilabel boutiques, vintage clothing emporiums, recycle shops like RagTag, online retailers like Zozotown and (at a stretch) maybe even chains like United Arrows and Beams.

Of course, as you so rightly point out, one day in the not-too-distant future, demographics will see to this fascinating culture's demise.

Mori and his cohorts, however, will be making the majority of their money out of middle-aged tourists visiting Tokyo from the provinces, not a single yen of which would ever have gone to pay for wacky threads from upcoming designers.

The same can be said for the foreign brands "invading" Aoyama.

Just as Omotesando Hills is not a symptom of some kind of malaise in the Harajuku scene (there is no malaise) nor will it be the cause of any such decline. The European maisons and their branded towers will not be causing one, either.

While the brands that Martin mentions may indeed take slices from a different pie than high-end brands, I'd beg to differ that the reason brand merchandise is a huge hit is due to wealth disparity in Japan, a phenomenon whose effects have yet to make themselves widespread. Though Coach, just for example (since it's a listed company unlike most fashion companies), has increased its sales by a factor of 10 in Japan since 1999, that doesn't mean there are 10x as many people rich enough to afford Coach in Japan. As noted in Coach's annual report, they (and other such brands) have been striving for "accessible luxury" chiefly by a) maintaining a presence in dept. stores frequented by the middle class, and b) offering more affordable products than in years past. This is a similar phenomenon to finding Calvin Klein in a Walmart in the US.

Some points:

1) Income disparity is not new. It's been on the rise for the last thirty years or so. Right now we're just in a "social class" media boom with everyone finally admitting to it. The economic conditions of the recession, however, led to a social psychology where consuming was not to "keep up with the neighbors" (a middle-class phenomenon), but be on the "right side of the fence." Thus the increase in status-demonstration brands.

2) There is very little overlap between the customer base of Franck Muller or Cartier and that of Bounty Hunter or Under Cover

No, but the female subcultures based on X-girl and Milkfed have been wiped out in recent years. Younger girls don't care about that kind of fashion and have generally moved towards the JJ, CanCam luxury brand set. I find it hard to believe that the six largest luxury brands can rise in sales by 60% from the 90s at a time when the fashion market in general is shrinking and that NOT mean that consumers are dropping mid-level brands for more expensive high-end goods. Undercover retains its tiny fanbase, but on a mass level, things are either Muji or LV, with fewer things still viable in the middle.

3) It's wrong to suggest that there is no alternative consumer culture to that offered by the two Hills developments. A casual wander through the backstreets of Harajuku (or Shibuya, or Daikanyama, or Nakameguro) quickly leads to large numbers of stores which offer art, music, books, junk and paradoxical anti-consumer philosophy alongside seemingly unwearable clothing creations.

There was a time when these tiny places were actually commercially viable. Also, there is a disconnect between these places and the snobbby media elite. You have way less record stores like Maximum Joy where the tencho is in bed with all the local hipster musicians. Bonjour is a corporate concern. A lot of these places are "unauthorized" in the sense that they are not seen as authentic outgrowths of the underground arbiters. (Not that I care about that kind of thing.)

4) Just as Omotesando Hills is not a symptom of some kind of malaise in the Harajuku scene (there is no malaise).

I'm not sure what you mean by malaise, but I think it's fair to say that most of the Harajuku brands are not doing as well as they did a decade ago. And new brands too find it much harder to be commercially viable. Just the fact that Boon etc. still write about Ape and mid-90s brands suggest that trend cycles are off - which is a classic symptom of economic malaise. When things are really moving, new brands find it easier to gain legitimacy and make their way into the fashion-consumer press. Can you imagine the big brands from '85 still being big in '95? Well, the brands big in '96 are still big in '06 for the male street fashion world.

My worry is not that there aren't young creative designers in Japan, but that the consumer base has shifted from taking magazines' advice to try wacky things to just buying teiban luxury goods with easily-understood social meanings. Things in Japan feel like '88 with a residue from the '90s alternative scene, opposed to a vibrant underground scene really holding up its own weight.

r.e. income disparity, Paul Krugman writing in yesterday’s IHT, cited a study by professors at Northwestern University who showed that the income of the top 1 percent of richest U.S. residents rose by 181%, and that of the top 0.1 percent rose by 497% - corresponding to a annual income of some $1.6 million.

It is my understanding that the economic conditions of the recession led to consumers purchasing brand goods as a substitute for larger purchases such as cars and houses that they were unable to afford.

I was referring to super-high-end watch and jewelry brands such as Franck Muller and Cartier, much of whose product output retails at prices in the regions of millions of yen.

Although the fortunes of Milkfed and X-girl have waned in recent years, the (admittedly shrinking) demographic they catered to has simply adopted a new set of brands.

Consult magazines such as Spring, PS and Jille to see the kind of things teenage girls are buying now. There has indeed been an increase in the popularity of the kind of looks proposed by JJ, Can Cam, Pinky and similar publications, but they are targeting an older readership.

The fact that Harajuku has been able to build brands with lasting (and international) appeal, such as BAPE, is testament to the strength of the scene. Longevity indicates stability rather than stagnation. Apart from short-lived successes like Gomme and Beauty:Beast, there were no internationally known Japanese street brands until Nowhere came along.

Boon has very little to do with trend cycles. Check Men’s Non-No (by far Japan’s biggest-selling menswear-focused monthly) for an indication of which brands are big right now. They are not the labels that were big ten years ago, and very few of them are influenced by U.S. urban culture. Number (N)ine, Mister Hollywood, John Lawrence Sullivan, Factotum, Attachment, WJK – all very new names – and all very European-looking.

I’d be interested to see what evidence you have for the decline in the fortunes of the Harajuku brands catering to the menswear market, but if that is indeed the case, perhaps it is related to a shift by teenage consumers away from hip hop-inspired looks towards rock-oriented ones. This month’s HUGE magazine runs a feature titled “Has Mode Fashion Killed Street Fashion?” WWD Japan recently reported on the rise of what it termed 不良ファッション (Delinquent Fashion) focusing on 恵比寿連合 (Ebisu Union), both of which are movements informed by rock style. The runaway success of Mastermind Japan (worn by Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt, Karl Lagerfeld and a host of J-Pop stars including hip hoppers like Hiro from Exiles) is perhaps a further indication of this shift in tastes among young male consumers of fashion.

Do the kids from less privileged backgrounds who have tended to identify more with hip hop culture have less money to spend? Is this another creeping consequence of that media-inflated income gap? Is it an expression of growing anti-American sentiment?

Gut reaction: What kind of idiot spends money on a purse rather than save up for a car?

Besides checking magazines to see what's hip, what kind of literature is out there discussing the economics of fashion? It's a fascinating topic to say the least.

Try WWD. For Japan, see www.japanconsuming.com

Besides checking magazines to see what's hip, what kind of literature is out there discussing the economics of fashion? It's a fascinating topic to say the least.

A great book on the economics of all cultural industries (music, fashion, art, publishing) is Creative Industries by Richard Caves (Economics professor at Harvard). That book pretty much lays out all the main economic issues in a very intelligent way.

For the sociology of consumption, Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class still holds up after 100+ years and is a really fun read. Simmel's "Trickle-Down" theory is also important for framing the social class aspect of fashion imitation. Bourdieu's Distinction is not specifically about fashion adoption, but the idea of cultural capital's relation to financial capital is a big one.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything in print very good about Japanese fashion economics. Definitely not in English. 下流社会 has some good conjecture on how social class formation will change production strategies for consumer durables. I will hopefully blog about that sometime soon.

It is my understanding that the economic conditions of the recession led to consumers purchasing brand goods as a substitute for larger purchases such as cars and houses that they were unable to afford.

Fashion consumption really got a boost in the 80s when housing prices skyrocketed and most middle-class people could no longer even dream of buying a house. It's important to remember that in the Bubble, only the rich made money, but the middle class still went along for the ride.

There has indeed been an increase in the popularity of the kind of looks proposed by JJ, Can Cam, Pinky and similar publications, but they are targeting an older readershi

I think Cutie is obviously for high school girls (and younger), but I don't get the sense that there is as much adoption of that genre with girls in the JJ / CanCam age range anymore. Once you hit 20, very few people stay in the Spring/Mini style, where I think you saw more extention of the style into later years in the 90s.

The fact that Harajuku has been able to build brands with lasting (and international) appeal, such as BAPE, is testament to the strength of the scene

Bape intentionally decided to not go abroad until they had to. I think Undercover may be a better example of foreign praise, but Japan has always had eccentric fashion brands a la CDG, YY, and Issey Miyake. Very few Japanese fashion brands have ever become mass consumed in the West or even gotten to Stussy mass underground status. Bape's already starting to get some backlash in the States.

I also think the way that these fashion waves work prove that Harajuku was strong in the 90s, but not necessarily as strong now. It takes a while for things to crash abroad, and I don't see a clear successor to Bape here in Japan. Mister Hollywood and those Non-no brands may be hot, but they're not epoch-making like Ape was. Do you think FatYo is going to win the hearts of taste makers in the West?

I’d be interested to see what evidence you have for the decline in the fortunes of the Harajuku brands catering to the menswear market, but if that is indeed the case, perhaps it is related to a shift by teenage consumers away from hip hop-inspired looks towards rock-oriented ones.

Stats are few and far between with these fashion brands (partly because of all the naughty people supplying the money), but I think there has been an overall decrease in fashion consciousness among young people. Less kids think they have to dress well than used to be the case. I think Ape and the Uraharajuku brands had a big impact on that because they basically said, jeans and t-shirts are fashion. The next logical step is that ALL t-shirts and jeans are fashion.

If the Japan today is just like '88, that means a resurrection of something like the Shibukaji fashion rebellion. The rich kids decided that fashion itself was beneath them and started dressing like American slobs.

Marxy said: "Less kids think they have to dress well than used to be the case. I think Ape and the Uraharajuku brands had a big impact on that because they basically said, jeans and t-shirts are fashion. The next logical step is that ALL t-shirts and jeans are fashion. If the Japan today is just like '88, that means a resurrection of something like the Shibukaji fashion rebellion. The rich kids decided that fashion itself was beneath them and started dressing like American slobs."

I guess I still don't see what's not to love about this. Granted it's less interesting for observers, but who should the Japanese consume to please? I'm curious to see what Japanese kids will put their energies into if they do abandon fashion.

If you need any more evidence that "the likes of Gwen Stefani are making the scene cooley for average Westerners" then take a look at this video from Disney Channel starlet Hilary Duff:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5295783370109329036&q=type%3Amusic_video+is%3Afree

In it she dons a black wig and seems to be living it up in "maybe Tokyo tonight." Could Duff pass for a Shibuya socialite??

What is a "Shibuya socialite?" When are people going to understand that Shibuya is not "hip"... it's just an open-air version of a Jersey shopping mall.

Then isn't Shibuya perfect for the likes of Duff? And isn't it symptomatic of something that, while her Japanese counterparts are after Duff-blonde hair, Duff looks arguably hipper in her wig than they do in theirs? The only reason anyone with taste goes to Shibuya is to change trains or go to record stores, which- let's be fair- are still head and shoulders above those found in New Jersey shopping malls.

Also, I've mentioned Gilles Lipovetsky on here before, now might be a good time to recommend his "Empire of Fashion":

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/5535.html