UCLA
Center for East Asian Studies
Japanese Youth and Popular Culture
September 14, 1999
Daily Yomiuri || Japanese Youth Culture || News File Index
Youth seeking originality bring brand diversity
Motomi Takahashi Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer ; Yomiuri
While the unbridled popularity of top imported brand goods such as Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Dior continues, another fickle cluster of consumers has emerged. A new generation of consumers is redefining fashion trends by selecting alternative and independent designs. Although the obsession with material possessions is unchanged, some young consumers now claim to be on a quest for originality. Are they really becoming original? @Byline Top:By Motomi Takahashi Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer A range of goods from a 2,500 yen hand-made ring to a 100,000 yen leather jacket are on display at Agosto, one of the first "select shops" to open in Ebisu, Tokyo, five years ago.
Select shops sell clothes, watches, bags, shoes, accessories, utensils and even furniture, and have recently been attracting the attention of consumers, especially fashion-conscious young people, not only in cities, but also in rural towns.
Riki Kawano, the 45-year-old owner of Agosto, said he had never heard of the term "select shop" when he opened his first shop. But he now has 20 branches nationwide, and the term often appears in magazine advertisements.
Similar stores existed 30 years ago. But the new type of select shop focuses on originality, according to Kawano. Agosto does not carry more than two of any item. With few items on sale, the open space of the shops emphasizes the exclusive nature of their merchandise.
"I came to buy a rare item that is only sold here," said Naoto Matsuoka, a 19-year-old student standing in line in front of a select shop in Shibuya, Tokyo. He said he did not mind waiting in line to purchase something that he really wanted.
Select shops vary in size, location, stock and fashion focus. A shop in Daikanyama, Tokyo, carries vintage denim pants and handmade hats. Another in Ura Harajuku, Tokyo, has eccentric shirts and trendy shoes. The bottom line is that the shops sell merchandise that appeals to taste of the owner or his or her merchandise buyer irrespective of its marketability.
The policy of Agosto and similar shops is to surprise consumers enough that they may say, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that!," according to Kawano. Agosto has introduced more than 100 alternative brands, including those by independent designers, and new wave fashion. "So, we have influenced the diversification of brand items,'" Kawano said.
But another view holds that the diversity in taste, which coincides with increased popularity of select shops, is driven by lifestyle changes among young consumers.
One of the most successful 1990s new wave designers, Takao Yamashita, 32, known as the producer of the brand beauty;beast, said that young people seem to be moving away from superexpensive brand goods in a quest to be more original.
"During the bubble economy, the trend was to wear top brands in an attempt to look stylish," said Yamashita, who started out with a flea market stall offering hand-made designs in limited numbers in Osaka. His designs are now being sold at many select shops across the country.
"People were pursuing a prefabricated, uniform image--symbolized by the top imported brands--at that time, but people in this decade have come to prefer being more individual," he said.
Some young people clearly agree. "Until a decade ago, people were paying for posh brand names without knowing what they really were," said Naoki Kowada, a 20-year-old student in Tokyo who often shops at select shops. "But the alternative brands I choose--whatever the style might be--clearly expresses originality." He added that people in his generation like being original.
Where has this desire for originality come from?
"Today's youth have a persistent desire to form their own personalities as they feel the society is unstable and unpredictable," said Satomi Kawaguchi, the 35-year-old editor of the fashion magazine Zipper, which has expanded its circulation from 80,000 copies per month when it was launched six years ago to the current 300,000.
The magazine's slogan, "Let's create our own style and set a trend," has been widely accepted by the magazine's young buyers, who are seeking originality instead of imitating the ready-made fashion presented by many other magazines.
"Young people are much more concerned about their future than before, so when we send out questionnaires to our readers, they don't answer that they want to go to college or become company employees. Instead, they say they want to be nurses or hair dressers (who have professional skills)," Kawaguchi said. "They can no longer feel secure by wearing the same things as their friends, because they want to be identified as an individual."
But their motivation for buying at select shops may not be so different as some think.
Ken Ohira, a psychiatrist at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tsukiji, Tokyo, said that consumers' desire to express their personality through material goods remains unchanged.
Ohira, author of "Yutakasa no Seishin Byori (Pathology of Affluence)," gives examples in his book of patients who came to him about problems in their lives and talked incessantly about brand goods. "They try to fill their feelings of emptiness caused by flimsy human relationships with material goods," he wrote in his book.
Ohira wrote that he had witnessed many of his patients showing off traditional brands in the bubble economy period of the late 1980s but that bragging about alternative brands has become more common among patients recently.
"The kinds and names of brands have changed over the past decade, but the obsession with tangible things caused by fragile human relationships demonstrates that consumers' attitudes are still the same," said Ohira.
While there are an overwhelming number of brands on the market--partly boosted by young peoples' desire to be original--traditional top brands are still popular despite the sluggish economy.
According to a survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun, Hermes increased annual domestic sales by 12.7 percent last year from 1997. Louis Vuitton's sales also increased by 7.8 percent in 1998 from the previous year, marking total annual sales of 76 billion yen in 1998.
At least 2,000 consumers crowded into a bargain sale of unredeemed imported brand goods held by a pawn shop cooperative in Hiroshima on Sept. 4. The popularity of the annual sale has not declined for 20 years, according to Masaru Oga, one of the organizers.
Even if the basic motives for buying brands, both established and alternative, seem unchanged, as Ohira contends, change could be occurring among young consumers, as Zipper magazine claims.
"It is true that older generations are attached to material goods, including brands, but young people are seeking to be different," Zipper's Kawaguchi said. "Expressing themselves by using tangible materials, for example, combining goods to create their own style, will lead to the establishment of real originality," she said.Copyright 1999 The Yomiuri Shimbun
