Fruits
A pictorial fashion show, by Shoichi Aoki
From Amazon.com
... the portraits gathered in photographer Shoichi
Aoki's book Fruits, from the streets of Harajuku
in Tokyo, point the way to an extraordinarily imaginative
and invariably stunning glut of mongrel fashion
heists. A best-of collection from the fanzine of
the same name, and published for the first time
outside Japan, Fruits keeps its style clean:
front-on, razor-sharp images, ranging from the deadpan
to the manic, of the sharpest collages of sartorial
influence that, usually, little money can buy.
From off the peg to off the wall, kitsch to bitch,
each person bears a combination and philosophy as
distinctive as DNA. All shades of aesthetic are
raided, with exquisite, scrupulous attention to
detail. Punk is a favorite, as is, appropriately,
Vivienne Westwood, alongside Milk and Jean-Paul
Gaultier, and the occasional Comme des Garçons.
Many of the outfits, though, are second-hand or
self-assembly, such as a skirt drooping petals of
men's silk ties, Wa-mono, when traditional Japanese
clothes are topped with, say, an authentic bowler
hat, EGL (elegant gothic Lolita), and a swathe of
tartans, pinks, and turquoises. The most malleable
feature, unsurprisingly, is hair, with dreadlocks,
mohicans, back-combing, and crops dyed an irradiated
spectrum. While the eye is drawn, obediently, to
the mannequins, the background is often worth a
look, either for the vending machines against which
a number are shot, or the ubiquitous Gap store and
bags, a constant reminder of the global mass market.