Japan has stayed largely insulated from fakes in fashion. This is due in part to proactive policing of the kind of blatant sales of fakes seen at markets and informal shops in Southern Europe and East Asia. While a decade or so ago you would see iffy pirated software sold openly on the back streets of Akihabara, the piles of counterfeit handbags you see abroad have always been harder to find.
There is one exception: Chrome Hearts, the Los Angeles-based gothic silver jewelry brand that has managed to retain its cultural clout in Japan ever since Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garcons Aoyama flagship collaborated with the brand in 1991. Since then, it is as if everyone decided en masse to look the other way on imitations as a seemingly uncontrolled flood of fakes find their way both to street stalls and respected accessory shops. To this day, you won’t struggle to find weekend sellers hawking cheap and sometimes fake accessories around Tokyo’s Akihabara and Ueno.
Chrome Hearts’ simple, sweeping lines, inspired by one of the founders’ background in carved woodwork, unfortunately lent very well to being remolded and reproduced, and the brand’s relatively high price point is often cited as a reason for this avalanche of fakery. Another undeniable cause is how ubiquitous the brand came to be among musicians and celebrities in the mid ’90s and early 2000s, followed by rap and K-pop stars. Such visibility turned Chrome Hearts into an aesthetic beyond the confines of the brand. In essence, it was popular enough that its motifs became bigger than the brand itself and were widely aped in menswear as a whole beyond accessories.