Customer Reviews

Fruits

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From the highly worshipped pages of Japan's premiere street fashion bible comes FRUITS, from the magazine of the same name, created and photographed by Shoichi Aoki. From its beginning in 1994, FRUITS magazine covered the wide world of street fashions sported by young Japanese crowd of the Tokyo suburbs. This edition of FRUITS, from Phaidon publishing, is a collection of full page portraits from the magazine. It's the first time many of these images have been published in the western world.

Be prepared to enter the wild and wacky world of Japanese street style; a mixture of thrift store chic, designer handbags and accessories, anime and manga color, traditional Japanese clothing and home created "couture", sure to grab your attention, if not to make you laugh out loud. Creativity and ideas abound (notice I didn't say they were all "good" ideas.) Witness fever pitched fashion passion, eye popping cartoon creations worn with complete self confidence. Getting your picture in FRUITS magazine is your fashion street cred badge of honor, and these kids pursue it with all the style muscle they can muster.

Rasta cowboys, EGL (elegant gothic Lolita) baby dolls, anime space cadets, rockabilly punks, designer samurais; these are but a few of the style hybrids on display. Mixing vintage finds, designer labels (like W<, Jean Paul Gaultier and the prolific influence of Vivienne Westwood), and their own customized experiments, these Japanese teens create a world where the only limit to style is their own imagination.

You need this book. It's that good.

I love the work by my fellow photographer Shoichi Aoki. Like me, he shoots the cool trendsetters on the streets of Tokyo. Since he started his magazine FRUITS in the mid-90s he has taken countless of photographs of the coolest street fashion that the world has seen sofar. The best of these shots are compiled in this book.

Aoki first started documenting street fashion in London in the mid 80's. He has told me that he taught himself how to take photographs from books. At the time Japanese fashion wasn't free at all. Inspired by the free street fashion of London the young Aoki decided he wanted to do something about Japanese staleness.

In the early to mid 90's things were beginning to change in Japan. The Harajuku area in Tokyo had its main thoroughfare closed off on Sundays and this was attracting more and more bands and show offs. The 'pedestrian heaven' (hokoten) as it was called became a laboratory and incubation center for new trends in music and fashion.

"In Japan," Aoki told me recently, "everybody had always dressed the same. Whatever was popular was worn by everyone. Everybody would wear Comme des Garçons or Ivy or whatever brand was 'in'. But suddenly Harajuku became free. People started to feel that it was cool to coordinate your own clothes. Harajuku fashion became really interesting and fun." He recalls: "You had this small group of trendsetters, perhaps 10 to 20 people. Whenever they came up with something new, others would soon imitate them. But these imitators weren't as cool as the original trendsetters so the trendsetters didn't want to be identified with them."

"To differentiate themselves again they came up with new things. It just escalated. They kept on trying to escape from their imitators right into "decora" (fashion style sporting lots of decorative stuff and strong bright colors). They figured nobody would follow them into wearing clothes that crazy."

FRUITS shows these 'crazy' trends in all their details. The book has virtually no text, just page after page of exquisitely printed color photographs. Aoki's photographs are unique in that he shows the full body, from head to toe, in actual street situations. This is much better than shots done in the studio. It is like photographing animals in the wild opposed to photographing them in the zoo.

Full body shots makes it possible to not only see the pants, skirts, dresses, coats and sweaters, but also the shoes, socks, stockings, hats and wild hairdos in all their glory.

Short descriptions explain what each person is wearing, their age and their 'obsession'.

If you want to put to rest the myth that Japanese people are not creative and original, you just have got to read this book. You'll find it a great inspiration.

After visiting Japan last year and having spent most of my time in Harajuku (where most of these pix were taken)--all i can say is this book truly captures how young Japanese teens dress. Hypercolored clothing, crazy extreme mismatching, a gaggle of plastic accessories, technotoys and unnatural hair color is standard-- it's anime character meets candyraver meets barbie in Super Mario land.

You may think these teens are the few "extreme" dressers in their society, but you're wrong. I would estimate that 80% of teens in Japan's metro areas dress this way, if not more extreme.

In fact, the teens in Fruits are a bit *subtle* compared to what is going on in Japanese fashion today. It's not uncommon to see girls in elaborate french maid outfits with metallic makeup walking out of the train station. Walking everywhere you see these hello kitty psycho sweethearts, riddled with fake blonde hair, white lipstick, and mile-high op-art platforms. I've turned a corner and seen gangs of japanese guys and girls looking like Bob Marley and Lauryn Hill, replete with fake black tan, dreads, ghetto fabulous hip hop gear and all. Scrupulous attention is paid to every part of the body. Only about 5% of Japanese girls i observed did NOT wear some kinda of intricate rainbow patterned/bejeweled nail art. And the best part is seeing all these vividly dressed youths swarming all around you in hordes.

Fruits, although on target for year 2001, is almost out of style now, given that Japanese fashion trends change every minute. If you can't get enough of Fruits, then you really need to take a trip to Japan (Tokyo) which I stress is vital for anyone in the fashion, arts, or other trend industry. It's like living in the future--talking toilets, automatic servamatrons, futurism galore, towns called Sunshine City, bridges named Rainbow Bridge--it's pop-culture infantilism crossbred with sophisticated technology, the most fascinating hybrid found only in Japan. I guarantee you will be visually stimulated and inspired to no end at the hallucinatory flourescence that is Japanese youth culture. Now go book that ticket.

I bought this book the moment it was released, based upon the cover photo which I saw in a magazine. This book is really fun-- if you like colors, can appreciate a whacky sense of fashion, and the extremeness of this particular collection. What I did not bargain for were the catchy captions for each subject: i.e."What is your point of fashion?" and "What is your latest obsession?" Some of the subject's replies' were great, especially the guy whose latest obsession was "digging holes". In addition to the interesting poses, photography, and creativity, the captions make this book fun to have, fun to pass around...and I am extremely happy that I found this piece of bound eye candy!

This is a hard book to put down! The clothing worn by the young Japanese hipsters in this book are costumey, outrageous, theatrical and over-the-top...and the kids all look like they're having a heck of a lot of fun with what they wear.

There are little points of inspiration in the pages of this book that I want to borrow for myself - adding an unexpected and totally off-the-wall accessory, wearing a normally taboo color combo, or mixing patterns.

While I am a bit older than the pink-haired punks and Elegant Gothic Lolitas found on the glossy pages, I think the message here isn't one of age, or even geographic location. It's that fashion is something we often take too seriously, and there is plenty of room for self-expression and fun in this area of our day-to-day lives.

Even if you may not be ready to go out wearing 8 Hello Kitty barrettes, 6-inch white platform wedgies, a pink vinyl Barbie purse and chartreuse dreadlocks with your black power suit, you can still have a lot of fun checking out the wild children in this beautiful book.

This book is a launch pad for creative dressing. Page after page of people playing almost every type of character from being the hippy to being the gothic lolita. After looking through this book, I have finally started making my own clothes. My favourite character was the person whose "fashion point" was to dress like a "suspicious looking woman". This is FUN! This made me realize that I should dress more like the weirdo that I am. This book has connected me towards my inner being. haha.

This brilliant book isn't fancy fashion photography--it's a series of slides that are made purposely for documentation. The subjects are clearly lit, always centred in the frame. Each page has a little bit of text in the corners--the model's name and age (13 to 25 seems to be the range here), favorite fashion, and "current obsession". Some of the answers to these bare-bones questions are amusing, but the focus and attraction of this book is outlandish streetwear.

And what streetwear! Camden town isn't a tenth as inventive. A dizzying array of styles and colours from head to feet; a mixture of cultures--a Japanese skinhead in suede cowboy chaps; kimonos worn with monster-fur boots; a bevy of little girls who are living dolls; an unintentionally ironic set of identically-dressed "punks"--every page is different from the rest. If you're the least bit interested in costuming and contemporary fashion, BUY THIS BOOK NOW! What a delight and inspiration!

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I love the colors and textures and looks they combine. What makes me happiest about this book is the couples. I like to think of them planing their funky wardrobe, calling, texting, sifiting through stores and closets and the original FRUiTS zines and meeting each other and smiling as they check out what their friend has put together and visa versa. SO many jeans and t-shirts on the street today, comfortable yeah but its safe. All the pretty details from hair ribbons to hats and all the velvets and cottons and tweeds in between are wonderful to pour over. Its also artistically pleasing when you want to see colors collide and patterns mix. All those combos make you smile for different reasons. And even if you want to stay safe in un-eye popping outfits you get a real escape looking at these happy people. Its also nice that these really look like fun OUTFITS not costumes- you know this isn't some Halloween parade somewhere. Some of them are very comfortable looking some look painful! But they are never uninteresting. Combine this book with TOKYO A Certain Style and you feel like you have a great view on these people's lives- where they come from where they live, how they express themselves in fashion that looks like something everyone can have if they can stand the stares :) What a great book- even if you aren't into fashion its a great human view- we are walking this planet and have our bodies to give something to the view of others and these people want to give a lot more than just another person walking by- and since we'd be arrested walking around naked.... You want to say THANKS for the fun :)

Having grown up in Harajuku myself I have witnessed the transformation of Japanese youth culture through the years. Harajuku's hokosha-tengoku (or hoko-ten:a wildly popular street hang out that used to be closed off to traffic on Sundays where most of these shots were taken)has always been an area where kids that did not fit into the conventional Japanese culture would come out and do their thing. What started out in the 70's as a forum for kids who dressed up as 50's rockabilly icons (the kids were content in just mimicking their American heroes) have decades later become an arena for the most outrageous fashion prophets of the new millenium. It is a pure joy to see my old neighborhood being chronicled by Aoki's masterful photography with his wry sense of humor. This journalistic celebration of the transmutated Japano-Western style is truely a kudos to the Japnese youths living in a tightly wound up homogeneous society. This book is a true testament to the enduring fact that individuality can survive despite the utmost societal and cultural pressure to conform.

Page after page of the craziest street fashions. Bizarre, silly and cool mixtures of different trends and styles that transform into something competely unique and timeless. Most of all, these kids are doing something personal by making these crazy combinations. The Kids In America should take a cue and let loose a little. This is FUN!