planatation1982

Fashion design & why Japanese fashion

Making the point on style, analysing the international fashion panorama, helps answer the recurring question: why Japanese fashion?

What is our prerequisite

On an international basis, we look for brands who have something to say, present good design and express their vision consistently. And we keep in mind the shift brought in by the pandemic: going to the essence. So we put together a capsule selection of meaningful pieces.
“Less but better” means that there’s a reason for every garment we choose.

A glimpse on international fashion panorama

We are quite perplexed about the designers’ proposals we have seen lately. We noticed that many brands have lowered the bar offering poor quality and meaningless design, also labelled “sustainable.”

Although some brands show beautiful dreamy lines, these have no context in our lifestyle, at least for now. So, we’ll keep an eye on them.

The Italian situation, specifically, requires a deep analysis.
In short, after the demolition of Italian craftsmanship and after production was dislocated to other countries, Italian fashion is not at its best. Many brands have no soul or remain stagnant, offering no evolution. Those who thrive mainly sell the vision of a sexy woman that sounds too status quo.

What leaves us perplexed is the direction that some international brands, considered the cool ones, are pursuing. If they aim to design a modern style, they repurpose a Japanese aesthetic. And so, the Instagram images are beautiful, but when you analyze the clothing design, the patterns, you can see where the idea comes from. Brands from Italy, the U.K., or North Europe. They have a large following, but all reveal the same specific inputs.

By the way, what we find somehow interesting is that those brands sell even to Japanese stores. The Japanese buy their own aesthetic made by someone else.

The style point: why Japanese fashion?

However, Nippon offered a lot in terms of unconventional and advanced fashion design. The similarity we find among Italian and Japanese culture is the obsessive attention to detail and style. Although it’s ok to get inspiration, from Italian and European brands in general, we do not expect exactly the same Japanese shapes.

So, rather than choosing European brands featuring a Japanese mood, we take the original ones.