Samuel Thomas is a fashion writer and lecturer at Bunka Gakuen University. He regularly contributes to The Japan Times, among other publications, and has his own site TokyoTelephone.com. He is currently pursuing his research in fashion at the University of Tokyo.
For Samuel Thomas's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
A Ha-Ha 2015 runway show included models in wheelchairs Japanese fashion has never really been a successfully influential vehicle for protest movements and political statements. There have been attempts, such as the design collective Ha-Ha, which again became the enfant terrible of Amazon Fashion Week Tokyo ...
Much has been made of the recent closure of the monthly print edition of Shoichi Aoki's seminal Fruits street-style magazine, with many ready to cry that it sounds the death knell for Harajuku fashion, rather than seeing it as a simple casualty of the ...
Design duo Hiroyuki Horihata and Makiko Sekiguchi have been making the case for the inclusion of Japanese aesthetics in contemporary fashion for more than a decade. Since founding fashion brand Matohu, the pair have championed Japanese tradition on the runway, which isn't easy in an ...
Tokyo menswear always used to be the easy sale of the city come fashion week, with womenswear collections characterized as thinking altogether far too locally to capture a global audience. Regarding menswear at least, they were correct, and the names who made successful appearances in ...
There are precious few publications standing against the accepted status quo that print media has had its day and the future is digital. Taking a stand among their ranks is lifestyle magazine Monocle, which even eschews social media, choosing to address those who seek ...
Q-Pot dishes out more sweet stuff Q-Pot, purveyors of ultra cute and occasionally disconcertingly realistic sweet-themed accessories, is marking its 15th anniversary with its very first fashion line: Q-Pot Dress. Tadaaki Wakamatsu, the designer of the jewelry line, is himself taking on the challenge by ...
SHINTARO YAMANAKA (QSYUM!) Much is quite rightly made of the enormous influence that Japan had on David Bowie, characterized best perhaps by his iconic stage outfits designed by the bombastic Kansai Yamamoto. However, long before Bowie set foot on Japanese soil in the early ...
Modesty takes center stage For all the political discourse centering on what Muslim women choose to wear, it is easy to forget that the hijab and related robes comprise a diverse genre of fashion. Looking at the garments beyond their religious connotations, they have a ...
Shanghai designer looks to break away from producing conventional collections
While Tokyo's womenswear seems to be content fighting for a place in the domestic market, the endlessly repeated adage that Amazon Fashion Week Tokyo's menswear is the collection's most viable export product appears to have finally come true, with many of the brands tipped ...
