Tokyo Look Book

Tokyo cool-tripper Jean Snow points us to a new book by Philomena Keet called The Tokyo Look Book – a photo-heavy book covering the latest trends in Japanese street fashion. A review in the Japan Times reports:

The Tokyo look [seems] confined to Shibuya and Harajuku, plus a bit of Ginza-Marunouchi, a smidgen of “seedy Roppongi” and a single glance at prole Shinjuku. Defining chapters are titled “Shibuya Girls and Guys,” “Spectacular and Subcultural,” and “Youth Street Fashions,” while sections in between are devoted to fashion-designers, fashion magazines, fashion boutiques,and fashion department stores.

…The author is aware of change on the streets (”bizarre styles still abound, but they are played out in more muted colors and shapes”) and of the constant need for identification. “So, what is street fashion?” she asks and then answers that it is some kind of spontaneous combustion that ignites the youngsters themselves. “It has a bottom-up rather than a top-down mechanism for gaining popularity.” She sees the streets of Shibuya as a baby fashion-incubator.

Tokyo Look Book On Amazon