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Art Design Events Fashion

Supplement: Tokyo

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Oh how I’d love to attend the first edition of the new talk/lecture series called Supplement: Tokyo. The first edition (on October 4) will have a list of speakers that includes two friends I think are smart as fuck (W. David Marx and Chris Palmieri), and will be moderated by one of the best dudes, period (Ian Lynam). Produced by Temple University Japan (where Ian also teaches design classes), each edition will be made up of “four short talks about the relationship of design, art, fashion, visual culture and writing followed by a Q&A panel session.” Love seeing something like this happen, and even the tagline: Supp: Tokyo.

Categories
Design Fashion

The 1964 Olympics Uniforms

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As part of his “Ametora Extended” collection of online essays, David has just posted a new piece that takes a look at the controversy surrounding efforts to determine who exactly designed the Japanese uniforms — mainly comprised of those iconic red blazers you see pictured) — for the 1964 Olympics. It’s an interesting read, especially in revealing how collaborative an effort it probably ended up being.

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Books Fashion Magazines Web

Ametora Extended

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This post serves as a reminder that W. David Marx has continued to support his fantastic book, Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style, since release through the Ametora Dispatches monthly newsletter — with each missive including an essay and links of interest — as well as footnotes to the book, that he posts on Medium (here are the footnotes for Chapter 4, and you’ll find the rest in the “Ametora Extended” collection). The Japanese edition of the book (out in July of next year) now has a page on Amazon Japan, and a monthly serialization in Popeye magazine is starting in this month’s issue (September 2016).

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Music Stores Web

Maki Nomiya’s Un Homme et Une Femme

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One of the first friends I made when I moved to Tokyo was Patrick Benny, who I had met through a Pizzicato Five mailing list (P5ML) — I met quite a few good friends that way, including W. David Marx and Jesper Larsson. We all shared a love for Shibuya-kei music, and Patrick was especially into the scene, and to this day continues to update his Tokyo’s Coolest Sound site, and still runs his Tokyo Recohan online store.

As I’ve been heavily into listening to Shibuya-kei of late (I’m listening to Fantastic Plastic Machine’s Moments compilation as I write this), I’ve also been taking a look again at Patrick’s Tokyo’s Coolest Sound, where the latest post highlights the upcoming release of a new Maki Nomiya album that celebrates the influence of French culture on Shibuya-kei. This video will give you a taste of one of the tracks (a duet between Nomiya and Crazy Ken Band’s Ken Yokoyama of “Un homme et une femme”). Very much looking forward to hearing the rest of the record.

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Uncategorized

Ametora

W. David Marx’s upcoming book on the popularity of the American Ivy League fashion style in Japan in the 60s, Ametora (short for “American Traditional”), comes out on December 1, and you can pre-order it from Amazon.

This is a project that David has been slowly cooking – let’s call it a crock-pot of a project – for quite a while, and seeing it finally get to a point where it’s almost out and already getting some great coverage – like a recommendation in the latest issue of Monocle, pictured in this post, and an excerpt in Lapham’s Quarterly – is really fantastic. There’s no one I know who is more knowledgeable about this topic – and to be honest, the history of modern fashion in Japan – than him (he even wrote a thesis on A Bathing Ape).

This all gets me feeling quite nostalgic. David is one of the very first friends I made when I first moved to Tokyo over 15 years ago. We became acquainted slightly before my arrival, through a Pizzicato Five mailing list, which is how I made all of my first friends in Japan.

Yes, even back then, electronic communications were a thing, imagine that.

Over the years we’ve each had our own entertaining journeys, and his involved producing some excellent music (under the Marxy monicker), and before launching the Néojaponisme website with Ian Lynam, he was quite well known for some epic online essays about Japanese culture that evolved into some of the most pointed and heated discussions, usually with Momus playing the role of foil.

So yeah, Ametora, can’t wait to read it.