FEATURE: The Best Japanese Street Style From TOKYO FASHION WEEK 2024 S/S!
Photos by Guest Collaborator TokyoFashion!
Tokyo Fashion Week is famous for its street style, perhaps more so than for its runway shows. Top Japanese designers including Yohji Yamamoto, Comme Des Garcons, Issey Miyake, and Undercover departed for Paris Fashion Week decades ago, so Japan's Fashion Week shows generally feature smaller brands, upcoming designers, and labels that are most popular in the domestic market. That leaves the Japanese street style scene as the main international draw during Tokyo Fashion Week. Twice a year, photographers from all over the world descend on Shibuya, Harajuku, and other Tokyo neighborhoods to street snap the creative young people, industry insiders, and occasional international guests that attend Tokyo Fashion Week runway shows, events, and parties.
This year, Tokyo Fashion Week finally got back up to full speed after the years-long COVID disruptions. For the 2024 S/S season (which took place in August/September 2023), the biggest brand on the schedule was iconic Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape (BAPE), hosting a big runway show to celebrate the 30th anniversary of legendary Japanese designer NIGO founding the brand.
The street style for Tokyo Fashion Week 2024 S/S was vibrant, original, and fun as the post-COVID generation of young Japanese creatives and fashion students turned out in force. We spotted many handmade looks, as well as fashion by indie and underground designers (including the growing popularity of young Chinese designers), vintage fashion, high brands mixed with low, streetwear, and other styles. It can be difficult to pick out trends at Tokyo Fashion Week because the styles are so eclectic (sometimes even eccentric), but Margiela tabi shoes, Vivienne Westwood accessories, and Rick Owens boots are perennial favorites.
Enjoy these Tokyo Fashion Week street style looks, and please let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more Japanese street snaps from Tokyo in the future.
All photos were shot by TokyoFashion exclusively for TokyoScope.
MONDAY 8/28/2023: Shibuya, Harajuku, Omotesando
TUESDAY 8/29/2023: Pays Des Fees, Harajuku, Omotesando
Japanese underground fashion brand Pays Des Fees known for collaborations with indie artists/musicians, and for being possibly the only fashion brand whose main boutique is inside of Nakano Broadway - held their Tokyo Fashion Week show at a historic former sewage plant today. The brand allowed us to shoot snaps of guests inside of the plant after the show, so you can see a bit of the industrial interiors. Most of the other brands today played it a little safer, having shows in the usual areas around Shibuya and Harajuku. Even though it was another extremely hot day in Tokyo, fashionable people were out and we were able to get quite a few street snaps to share with you.
DAY THREE 8/30/2023: Harajuku, Shibuya, Olympic Stadium
Tokyo Fashion Week day three was another busy one. We shot street snaps outside of no less than five shows, two of which featured multiple designers. Today was the "Global Fashion Collective" day where designers from Mexico, Africa, and various other countries come together to present collections one after another in a single runway show. Most of the runway shows on day three were in Omotesando and Shibuya as usual, but the final show of the night was at Tokyo's new Olympic Stadium, a beautiful wooden building in Sendagaya designed by famed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.
One of today's runway shows was by a popular Filipino fashion brand, bringing out Filipino influencers as well as Misuru, a popular Japanese Harajuku model who's been living in the Philippines for part of this year. We were happy for the opportunity to see her (and to photograph her colorful hair and fashion) for the first time in several months. One of the fun things about shooting Tokyo Fashion Week is that twice a year it forces IRL contact between all of the Japanese fashion industry people who might only talk to each other via social media, email, or phone otherwise.
Guests of note who we shot today include Tokyo-based Korean makeup artist Gyutae, Japanese kawaii cyber gyaru Dede, Japanese fashion photographer/writer Rei Shito, one of Japan's top male runway models, and even Drag Race Sweden contestant Endigo.
All photos were shot by TokyoFashion exclusively for TokyoScope.
The fourth day of Tokyo Fashion Week was all about A Bathing Ape (BAPE). Legendary Japanese streetwear brand BAPE - most famous for inventing the current "drop" culture we all live in - is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Fashion Week head sponsor Rakuten pulled out all the stops to get the brand to do a runway show (billed as the first ever BAPE runway show in Tokyo).
While BAPE is one of the most famous Japanese fashion brands in the world, founder NIGO (now the head designer of another legendary Japanese brand, KENZO) sold the brand several years ago, and it's currently run by a Hong Kong company. The fact that NIGO isn't the designer anymore means that we didn't see some of the super a-list 1990s Harajuku/Urahara luminaries, but the show was still packed with Japanese celebs, rappers, influencers, top industry executives, and swarms of BAPE fans.
The BAPE 30th anniversary fashion show was held at the 1964 Japanese Olympic Stadium (Yoyogi National 2nd Gymnasium) designed by Kenzo Tange, one of the most beautiful modern buildings in all of Japan. As it was the last runway show of the night, it was held after dark with the entire front of the Olympic Stadium illuminated in A Bathing Ape's iconic color camouflage pattern, creating a party-like atmosphere for the guests entering the show. There were also special unannounced performances by K-Pop stars and others during the runway show, which was a rare non-live-streamed TFW event. Most Tokyo Fashion Week shows are available to watch live on Instagram, but for BAPE you had to be there or miss out on the fun.
The lighting at the Yoyogi National 2nd Gymnasium isn't the best for photography, and the party-like atmosphere and large crowd added to the challenge - but we were able to get quite a few BAPE street snaps in front of the illuminated stadium. A super moon also lit up the skies of Tokyo after the sun went down (helping to illuminate our street snaps).
All photos were shot by TokyoFashion exclusively for TokyoScope.
DAY FOUR: BAPE, HARAJUKU, SHIBUYA
