In a country where craftsmanship is so highly prized, it’s no surprise to learn that even a product as universal as jeans has been raised to an art form. Thanks to traditional production methods that create high-quality, long-lasting jeans, Japanese denim has iconic status among “connoisseur denim heads”, who are prepared to pay £250 or more for a pair.
Major Japanese brands, such as Momotoro, Pure Blue Japan and Studio d’Artisan, all have stores in the big cities, but arguably the best – and certainly the most interesting – place to buy jeans in Japan is hundreds of kilometres away from Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, in a sleepy coastal district on the southern coast of Honshu, the biggest of the four main islands.
An hour’s train ride south of Okayama city, Jeans Street in the port town of Kojima is a hub of 38 specialist denim shops. The “street” is actually four streets – each strung with lines of jeans as if someone has just hung them out to dry. Shopping here couldn’t be further from the big city experience of Japan – there are no crowds, no neon lights, no department stores and no subcultures on display. I strolled near-empty streets, and browsed quiet shops where I was left in peace to look around.
More than just a retail experience, Jeans Street is a homage to denim, with the hard-wearing blue fabric referenced in everything from vending machines to drain covers and signs to public loos. Some stores are traditional in style, with sliding screen doors, tatami mats and tranquil gardens; others are tiny modern boutiques. Inside they sell not just beautifully made jeans but shirts, jackets, skirts, coats, aprons and wallets.
To understand why one of the country’s most intriguing shopping experiences is in a small, unassuming town in Okayama prefecture, you have to rewind a few decades – to postwar Japan. One of the side-effects of the US occupation during the second world war was an obsession with Americana among Japanese youth, who embraced American pop culture and created a healthy black market in used Levi’s and Lee jeans.
In Kojima, textile factories that had for decades specialised in school uniforms and workwear saw a business opportunity. The first Japanese denim company chose the most American-sounding name it could come up with: Big John. And then it did the same for its women’s brand: Betty Smith. Initially, Big John used denim fabric and sewing machines imported from the US, but in the 1970s it started to produce its own denim using old shuttle looms and traditional indigo-dyeing techniques – and Japanese jeans were born.
by Isabel Choat, The Guardian | Read more:
Major Japanese brands, such as Momotoro, Pure Blue Japan and Studio d’Artisan, all have stores in the big cities, but arguably the best – and certainly the most interesting – place to buy jeans in Japan is hundreds of kilometres away from Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, in a sleepy coastal district on the southern coast of Honshu, the biggest of the four main islands.
An hour’s train ride south of Okayama city, Jeans Street in the port town of Kojima is a hub of 38 specialist denim shops. The “street” is actually four streets – each strung with lines of jeans as if someone has just hung them out to dry. Shopping here couldn’t be further from the big city experience of Japan – there are no crowds, no neon lights, no department stores and no subcultures on display. I strolled near-empty streets, and browsed quiet shops where I was left in peace to look around.More than just a retail experience, Jeans Street is a homage to denim, with the hard-wearing blue fabric referenced in everything from vending machines to drain covers and signs to public loos. Some stores are traditional in style, with sliding screen doors, tatami mats and tranquil gardens; others are tiny modern boutiques. Inside they sell not just beautifully made jeans but shirts, jackets, skirts, coats, aprons and wallets.
To understand why one of the country’s most intriguing shopping experiences is in a small, unassuming town in Okayama prefecture, you have to rewind a few decades – to postwar Japan. One of the side-effects of the US occupation during the second world war was an obsession with Americana among Japanese youth, who embraced American pop culture and created a healthy black market in used Levi’s and Lee jeans.
In Kojima, textile factories that had for decades specialised in school uniforms and workwear saw a business opportunity. The first Japanese denim company chose the most American-sounding name it could come up with: Big John. And then it did the same for its women’s brand: Betty Smith. Initially, Big John used denim fabric and sewing machines imported from the US, but in the 1970s it started to produce its own denim using old shuttle looms and traditional indigo-dyeing techniques – and Japanese jeans were born.
by Isabel Choat, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: uncredited
