The Vintage Boom and the Japanese Art of Coordination: A Reference
Vintage styling is back, and the Japanese habits that shaped it are half a century old. For that long Japanese dressers have studied other people’s clothes, collected them, and arranged them into outfits, sometimes improving on the original. The Japanese word is the coordinate, the complete look, and its most visible home is the street.
This page belongs to the Reference Shelf of The Fashionista Bible. Dates are checked against published accounts, and where accounts disagree the page says so.
A dated education
The lesson began in Ginza. In 1964 the Miyuki-zoku gathered on Miyuki-dori carrying VAN paper bags; police cleared them in September, before the Olympics. Take Ivy followed in 1965. The Made in U.S.A. catalogues appeared in 1975 and 1976, Beams opened in February 1976 and Popeye that summer. Men’s Club had begun a street-snap column in 1963. The street itself became a magazine subject with STREET in 1985 and FRUiTS, which ran from June 1997 to February 2017. The full dated record is in the Encyclopedia’s timeline.
The laid-back turn
After the bubble, Tokyo’s younger consumers moved from imported status brands towards American casual, amekaji, and later a Shibuya version, shibukaji, which replaced Juppie styles among younger Tokyo-suburb consumers. Yu Fujiwara, a director of the vintage dealer BerBerJin, adds the other half in his account of the early 2000s: a generation new to vintage began buying the original denim in place of the reproductions that had been Japan’s own speciality.
What coordination means
A coordinate is not a trend. It is a decision about how old and new, American and Japanese, expensive and cheap sit on one body. The skill is editing, and the magazines are where it was taught: a reader could learn to dress from a photograph of a real person in a real street. W. David Marx’s Ametora (2015) tells the American-trad half of the story.
Thesis Discussion
This is the thesis’s second verb, edit, in its most wearable form. The Japanese dresser rarely invents a garment. He or she chooses a garment, places it in an outfit and, increasingly, tells the world which. The same habit explains the select shop, the denim reproduction and the sukajan.
The common claim that Japan has always admired vintage styling deserves a caution: for most of the postwar period the objects admired were American, and the admiration was the work of a small number of editors, shop owners and magazines. What is new is the audience. See The Japonista Thesis and Ametora.
Related Articles
In the Archive
American Casual (Amekaji) & Yakuza Fashion · BEAMS · Ralph Lauren · Levi’s · Military Flight Jacket & Nose Art
Read on: Encyclopedia: magazines · Furugi · Magazines · Tokyo shops · Fashionista Bible · collector guides
The Hunting Salon™
If you are looking for Japanese-made amekaji, such as reproduction denim or flight jackets, maker and era detail are part of the search. The Hunting Salon™ can assist discreetly with search, verification and shipping.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a coordinate?
A complete outfit, chosen and arranged as a whole.
What is amekaji?
Japanese American casual: American clothes studied closely and often improved.
Who started it?
No one person; the 1964 Ginza Ivy boys and the 1970s magazines are the usual markers.
Where should I start?
The Ametora article and the History of Amekaji.
Notes on Dates
VAN’s paper bags and the September 1964 clearance are in our dated record; the account of the 1964 Olympic team blazers is disputed. STREET is dated 1985 and FRUiTS 1997 to 2017.
This volume belongs to the Japonista Universe, Volume VII. The argument behind it is set out in The Japonista Thesis.
Index terms: japanese coordination · kode · amekaji · ametora · shibukaji · japanese street snaps · vintage styling japan · laid-back japanese fashion · take ivy · miyuki-zoku
