In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.
When it comes to gender equality, Japan has never failed to disappoint.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
Samuel Thomas is a full-time fashion writer and regular contributor to The Japan Times and Change Fashion amongst others, as well as his own site TokyoTelephone.com. His first book on Japanese fashion will be published by Kodansha in summer 2013.
For Samuel Thomas's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
It's a bittersweet finale for the famed Japanese fashion brand Mastermind, as it officially ends its 15-year run with the release of its 2013 spring/summer — and final — collection.
This year will see the arrival of a formidable new force in the Japanese fashion market. Perhaps best known for being a go-to for Hollywood stars, Fred Segal is a trend-setting California clothing and lifestyle goods retailer, which in its 50-year history had never ...
The popular Fashion’s Night Out festival — helmed by Vogue magazine and held in the top fashion cities of the world every September — is about to be replicated in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city. Taking place on Dec. 15 inside the city’s sprawling Umeda ...
New York-based designer Cynthia Rowley celebrated her brand’s 10th year in Japan with a special talk show and cocktail dinner for VIP guests during Tokyo Fashion Week. The Barrington, Illinois, native’s name has long been on the lips of American sportswear fans with her ...
Just one week after Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo had drawn to a close, the capital’s fashionistas were drawn back to the runway for a slew of shows that have been gaining in popularity. The touchMe presentations, now in their third year and seventh iteration, ...
Men were quick to put their best feet forward at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo, with a heavy concentration of light and minimalist sportswear that proved popular on the catwalks. The menswear element of this Oct. 13-20 event may have opened with the Facetasm show ...
Watching the Fashion Week Tokyo models pounding polished catwalks in the glitzy Hikarie building in shopping-central Shibuya, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Paris. However, since Mercedes-Benz’s debut as a major sponsor this time last year, now three seasons ago, designers ...
Department store Parco is aiming to fill the vacuum created by the rapidly declining gyaru (gal) culture that used to define the Shibuya area of Tokyo. By taking aspects of the otaku (geek) culture of Akihabara and re-imagining them through art and fashion in ...
Fans of French luxury brand Louis Vuitton are still seeing spots before their eyes. The brand’s latest collection with Yayoi Kusama comes after a string of highly successful artist collaborations that began in 2002 with Takashi Murakami. It really was only a matter of ...
Isabel Marant, the queen of French haute-casual wear, has finally opened her first shop in Japan, right off of Tokyo’s Omotesando promenade. When it comes to French style, chic and sleek uniforms of black usually come to mind. Parisian designer Marant’s collections, however, are ...
