Black cover plate with white serif title: Ron Herman, California as Curated from Tokyo

Ron Herman: California as Curated from Tokyo

Many of the labels in this set are Japanese clothes about America. Ron Herman is the reverse case, or very nearly: a Los Angeles shop begun in 1976, which in 2009 opened its first store in Japan, and which by 2019 belonged to a Japanese company. The pages record the story in dates and numbers rather than in sentiment, which makes it unusually easy to set down accurately. They also record, between the lines, something about how California looks from Tokyo.

This chapter belongs to Ura-Harajuku: A Reader’s Guide to the Back Lanes and the Labels That Made Them. It follows the pages listed under References, notes where they leave gaps, and keeps interpretation to the last section. The pages date from 2018 to 2021; they tell us nothing about the stores today, and we assert nothing about current trading.

Inside Fred Segal, 1976

The brand’s own page says it was established in 1976. The Mr Mag profile, written for the label’s forty-fifth year, quotes Ron Herman saying he began the journey of a lifetime that year, and says it started as a specialty shop inside Fred Segal. The same article credits him with introducing the shop-in-shop concept and with pairing California cool with world-class luxury. Neither this page nor the brand’s own says what the first shop sold.

As of the 2018 and 2021 pages, there are three California shops: the flagship at 8100 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, which Apparel News describes as two storeys and fourteen thousand square feet and Mr Mag calls an ivy-covered building, and women’s boutiques in Brentwood and Malibu. The brand’s page describes the three as family owned and operated.

A Partnership of a Decade

Japan came in 2009. The brand’s page says it entered the country that year, and Mr Mag says the first Japanese store opened in 2009 with help from Koki Mine, whom the article names as president. Apparel News says the Japanese partner was Sazaby League, which worked with Herman to open the stores; its 2018 article, which says Herman ventured into Japan “about a decade ago”, counts twenty stores in the chain, and the later pages say more than twenty. The same article says Herman was aiming to bring the Japan-only house labels, among them RH Vintage and Ron Herman California, to Los Angeles in 2019.

Mr Mag adds a note on the partner. Sazaby League was established in 1972, and, the article says, has since 2009 also opened cafés, spas and specialty shops with skate and surf gear.

Labels for Japan Alone

Apparel News says the Japanese shops carried Japan-only products, among them a collaboration with Vans and a limited-edition Toyota FJ Cruiser. That is the whole of what the pages say about the range, and this chapter does not extend it. For the 2021 anniversary Mr Mag lists collaborators for a campaign built around Los Angeles and authentic style: BFTL, Ciao Lucia, Frank & Eileen, Free & Easy, M. Cohen, Phipps, Propaganda Agency, Re/Done, RHLA and Weird Bits, with patchwork silk robes, palm-motif jewellery, suede tote bags and signature denim among the products. The page does not say which of these were sold in Japan. The Apparel News article of 2020 mentions a planned sustainable-cashmere line, RHLA, and holiday shop-in-shops for Los Angeles brands.

The Sale of 2019

In 2019, Mr Mag and Apparel News agree, Sazaby League acquired Ron Herman’s operations. The Apparel News article, published in October 2020, gives the buyer as the Japanese holding company Sazaby League Ltd., the vendor as Ron Herman himself, the price as undisclosed and the date as 2019, and says that Herman and his wife, Carol, stayed on as consultants until January 2020 before leaving. It describes the two companies as partners for more than a decade before the sale. Mr Mag says Sazaby League bought all Ron Herman operations globally after ten years building in Japan.

The label’s room is Ron Herman.

Our Reading: Distance as an Editor

The pages do not say this, and we do. A shop that begins inside another shop, in Los Angeles, and is carried across the Pacific by a Japanese partner becomes, over thirty years, an editor’s version of California: chosen, arranged and returned. The Japan-only products are the plainest evidence: they were made for the Japanese shops alone, under the name of a Los Angeles shopkeeper.

That is the mirror image of the story told in The History of Amekaji, in which Japanese enthusiasts studied American dress from the outside and rebuilt it with better materials and more patience. The Ron Herman account suggests that the traffic ran in both directions: the same appetite for an America that had been edited, shown in a Tokyo shop window. The Californian label that exported its own idea of friendship across the same ocean is the subject of Stüssy: Surf Origins and the International Tribe.

After Ron Herman, RH Vintage or a Japan-only collaboration? Our Hunting Salon™ searches across Japan's private collector circles on your behalf.

Questions and answers

When was Ron Herman founded?

The brand says it was established in 1976; Mr Mag adds that it began as a specialty shop inside Fred Segal in Los Angeles.

When did Ron Herman open in Japan?

In 2009, according to the brand’s own page and Mr Mag, with Sazaby League as the Japanese partner.

Who owns Ron Herman?

According to Apparel News, the Japanese holding company Sazaby League Ltd. acquired it in 2019; this chapter does not record the position today.

References

Dates and figures in this chapter were checked against these pages. Where accounts differ, the text says so.

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Index terms: ron herman · rh vintage · ron herman california · rhla · sazaby league · fred segal · los angeles to tokyo · japanese select shops · american style in japan · ura-harajuku

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