For Martin Webb's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
While his daughter Limi prepares to present her Limi Feu line at the Paris collections for the first time in October, Yohji Yamamoto has selected another protege to take her place on the Tokyo runways. Michiko Suzuki joined the Japanese fashion maestro's firm as ...
Taking on the task of reinvigorating Tokyo's beleaguered attempt at producing a world-class fashion week requires a good deal of gumption. In this regard, Nobuyuki Ota, CEO of leading fashion house Issey Miyake, is relishing the task and achieving a measure of success. Last week, ...
Last season's Japan Fashion Week (JFW) was held before the New York Fashion Week, which is traditionally the first event on the annual international catwalk circuit. But this time, Tokyo reverted to its regular slot after the Paris Collections that have since time immemorial ...
Cosmic reconceptualization The Paris fashion season has been the principal forum for presenting the works of cultural phenomenon COSMIC WONDER since it debuted at the Centre Pompidou in 2000. This year, however, marks a significant shift in the strategy of the label's elusive instigator Yukinori Maeda. Maeda ...
Japan is famous for its fondness of luxury brands, particularly those from France. In fact, when the money spent shopping on vacation is included, Japanese consumers may buy as much as 45 percent of all luxury goods sold worldwide, analysts at the HSBC Group ...
Homunculus by Hugh Paxton. Macmillan New Writing, 2005, 256 pp., £12.99 (paper). The grotesquely fanged monster armed with a spear and an assault rifle that comes hurtling out of a rising sun on the cover of "Homunculus" should be fair warning to readers that something ...
Little monkeys No bones about it -- Nigo(R) is on fire. The man behind the A Bathing Ape(R) streetwear phenomenon sits at the helm of a branding machine that encompasses stores in New York, London, Hong Kong, Taipei and every big city on the Japanese ...
The world of fashion is no stranger to an excess of marketing hype surrounding creations with a singular lack of substance, and Tokyo is no exception. Now Theatre Products, a prime example of a fashion brand that is talking loud but not saying very much, ...
Robert Feldman is chief economist at Morgan Stanley Japan Securities, where, as cohead of Japan Equity Research, he is responsible for forecasting the direction of the Japanese economy. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1998, he was the chief economist for Japan for Salomon Brothers, ...
Japanese consumers are famous (or infamous) the world over for their obsession with luxury brands -- and as hard data demonstrates, this is definitely no globalized urban myth. Astonishingly, the Tokyo-based Yano Research Institute found that, in 2005, the luxury goods market in Japan amounted ...
