White dude working as a fashion stylist in tokyo, ask me anything

- a little over 6 foot
- yeah, balding though, thankfully i have a really aesthetically pleasing skull shape and good beard genetics
- enough

will probably post fit later

radd lounge is another good one, they carry some really whack stuff but the guy who runs the place is something of a guru to a lot of the modern streetwear kids. places like gr8 in laforet harajuku basically learned everything from radd lounge but focused solely on the really poppy stuff that's significantly more marketable. good for them i guess, but iriki deserves a lot more success.

junkmania/rightstuff is another good one in shibuya, super close to both nid and radd lounge. it's run by a couple rappers who have a taste for vintage versace and fanny packs.

also related, the pic in the op is from my friend's shop that opened recently, called aoi (aoi.black is the website). the guy who bankrolled junkmania decided to invest in a massive embroidery machine, and hired my friend who now makes these absolutely gorgeous patches. the level of detail is mesmerizing.

no, i dropped out of university in my first year. moved here on a whim, met the right people. getting my foot in the door was entirely right place right time, and i've been able to keep moving forward through networking, dressing well at events, and keeping my clients happy.

the amount of self-marketing required to really excel in my line of work is a bit difficult for me, i'm not even really using instagram which is a huge mistake considering a lot of the models i work with have like 50-100k followers and it's a really easy advertising vehicle. it makes me really anxious though

Here
What a coincidence! I was at Raddlounge yesterday and had like an hour long conversation with Iriki about music and stuff! We went for food together after the shop closed for the day!

Hes a really nice guy

yeah, iriki is wonderful. he's so tuned in yet carries absolutely no pomposity. dude doesn't posture at all, just wants to share cool stuff with people and is always eager to listen if you can reciprocate

i met my now-best friend at radd lounge maybe five years ago, were it not for that shop i probably wouldn't have built a life out here

Yeah, I really didn't think he was a big deal or anything when we met haha. He just seemed like a genuinely interested dude. , after we had established that we liked the same type of hip-hop, I showed him a lot of rock music he'd never heard about. He really loved it apparently haha!

Damn happy that japan is working out for you. I'm sadly going back to Europe in 2 days ;( Have had a wonderful time here though!

Do you find people in creative industries like fashion more tolerant of foreigners than other Japanese? Also do you make a decent living

Thanks for the quality thread user

Favorite designers?
And I know you got asked this but can you name some more low key Jap brands in general, not necessarily up and coming
Specifically in the vein of ffixxed, takahiro miyashita, facetasm, that sorta vibe

why do orientals dress like blacks from the year 2100?

definitely, but the fashion world here (and i assume elsewhere) is made up of multiple disparate scenes. the crowd at a dttk party is different from the crowd at an armani party, but there's some occasional spillover (like me, i guess). usually younger people are way more interested in working/dealing with foreigners, but there are some exceptions both ways.

tokyo is still really old fashioned, and while the fashion industry here is significantly more open-minded than some other industries here, it still fucks itself over through rigid adherence to rules from a bygone era. a lot of brands won't lend me clothing for a shoot that'll get 100k+ views online, but will lend for some unknown european paper magazine that'll be seen by a hundred people at most.

on that note, despite the fact that a lot of high end japanese brands have no problem working with foreign stylists (yohji yamamoto and issey miyake are two of my main clients), a lot of japanese magazines don't really fuck with foreign content creators. it might just be that i don't have any connections to them, which would make sense considering it's an industry that's built entirely around connections, but it feels even more cliquey than the rest of the industry.

and no, i don't make a whole lot of money. it's glamorous and interesting, but i'm not at a point yet where i'm making what most would call a decent living. i get by, but i have to supplement with some other projects. the perks are pretty fantastic though, and i'm doing a lot better now than i was a couple years ago, so i'm hopeful for the future.

you're welcome, this place is kind of intimidating

thats an awesome design? do you happen to know what embroidery machine your friend used to make something like that?

That sounds sick

I went to Japan 3 years ago after I graduated highschool, dropped by Radd Lounge because I had seen them on tumblr and the guy there was one of the chillest sales associates I met during my month long stay in tokyo, tried to talk about king krule and ryan hemsworth lol

In what capacity do you work with the yohji company? I'm a huge fan of yohji, been wearing it since i was 19 (and is why i went to japan) so i'd be super curious to hear what it's like working for / with the company.

working in the industry there too seems quite daunting, it seems to be such a domestic dominated industry that's hard for foreigners to navigate / break into. i studied fashion design for a bit and i've always wanted to live in japan but working in fashion there seemed near impossible with the cultural differences, etc.

there doesn't seem to be much new going on in japanese fashion, would you agree? or are you starting to see something different

also im planning on visiting tokyo again later this year, any cool / low key spots (bars, restaurants, cafes, novel shit to do in general) to hit up? I hit up alot of well known shops / cafes etc when i was there and now i want to experience something more niche

I have a friend that lives in Yokkaichi/Nagoya-area. Is there anything really in Japan that I wouldn't be able to get easily in the US? Considering that I'm not really into streetwear (pic related but not me).

How much Japanese do you speak?

How did you go about landing this job?

What's the pay like?

how'd you learn japanese? were you fluent enough before you moved?

google AOI INDUSTRIES real interesting stuff on there

you bought any of their pieces? this parka is really nice but I've no clue what quality will be like

forgot to link aoi.black/product/snspeed2

Is it hard to get into Bunka? I'm looking at going there after I finish university.