Tokyo retail reality check
Tokyo, a fantastic and shining metropolis. A mecca for denim lovers and a benchmark for retail analysis. This summer in Tokyo, the city and its retail offering made my head spin. Begging one big question: what’s up in international denim and fashion retail? Tilmann Wröbel takes us on his most recent Tokyo retail tour to find out.
This August I took my kids, aged 13, 16 and 28, to Tokyo. It was the first time I wasn’t traveling there for business, but it didn’t stop my ‘professional denim consultancy brain’ from staying alert. My initial plan was to focus on culture, architecture and my kids’ passion for the animations of anime. We stayed in Shibuya, close to the boroughs of Harajuku, Daikanyama and Nakameguro, and our attention was quickly drawn to shopping, retail, and denim.
One of the many highlights of the trip was visiting Jacques Marie Mage’s impressive brand-new Harajuku store, ahead of its official opening ceremony. Many thanks for the recommendation from my former colleague Olivier Grasset (Dr. Collectors), our friend Yoshio Yokobori, a fashion consultant, and especially denim expert Stephane Muller who now rocks the development of Jacques Marie Mage in Japan.
Besides this memorable experience, suddenly we all had denim products in mind, for personal, or for me, professional reasons. I remember finding myself in Tokyo some 25 years ago and wanting to buy absolutely everything. Every single pair of jeans. This time, however, felt different. My son Romeo (16) captured it on the second day of our stay: “Dad, isn’t it strange that the styles I see in the stores have nothing to do with what the stylish people wear in the streets?”
He spotted, and confirmed, what I have been discussing with my clients and addressing in my trend seminars these past seasons. The big gap between denim retail and reality. The gap between security-driven retailers and consumers hungry for “wow effect” products when they shop in brick-and-mortar stores. In Tokyo as much as in Europe.
I, like anyone in the world of denim, am delighted to see amazing campaigns in the likes of Katseye for Gap, Beyonce for Levi’s, or Sydney Sweeney for American Eagle. But what do you see when you push the doors of a store? Not the ‘fancy’ styles promoted. Welcome to a world of dull, more or less tight-fitting basics, most often made from price-conscious fabrics and boasting tired moustache and used effects.
Former high points of a denim pilgrim’s favoured haunts, like the Replay store in Daikanyama, have become no-go’s for modern demographics. Worse, the ‘denim sector’ of department stores have fantastic walls filled with… basic jeans. A few flannels, but few customers in the alleys. It’s sad, really, to see sales staff striving not to fall asleep in their shop-in-shops surrounded by international denim brands that were once the holy grail of denim.
Falling off the map
This reminded me of other coveted brands that had gone from hero to zero in the blink of an eye. Take cell phone company Nokia that misinterpreted the signs of times to become a shining example among the biggest fails in tech history. What if basic denims were today’s Nokia? Why is it so difficult for a denim-interested person to find new and exciting products in stores? In Europe or in an international capital as is Tokyo?
Luckily, there are places to experience true wow moments, like the fantastic jeans presented like artworks in Visvim’s store in Nakameguro. Shopping here is memorable. The store embodies what denim used to stand for. One is tempted to buy everything. Located in a typical Japanese house with authentic wooden beam ceilings, it displays in small rooms no more than some 40 styles (tops, bottoms, shoes), and only one of each. Additional sizes are hidden in the backrooms. This is when blue-blooded hearts start pumping.
Kapital Legs in Daikanyama is another. It presented an exciting new green leaf dye, and we enjoyed our conversation with the store’s highly informed sales team.
What about luxury brands? Never have I seen such a wealth of fashion-relevant, yet classy denim styles in luxury stores. If luxury brands are beyond your budget, that is not a problem, head to a sports shop or even an adidas store where you will find a great number of sporty, absolutely trend-relevant, well fitted jeans. Not a basic in sight.
Which begs the question: what is denim today? On one hand, trend forecasters pitch short-term denim fads or overdesigned jeans that have neither a future, nor a reason, nor a need. On the other, an industry that has traded perfectly good cotton for under average fibre blends; sharp fits for shapeless super-stretch; function and resistance for nothing, or some vague notion of a washed blue fabric made for the masses, removed of all traces of a past of utility, rebellion, meaning and storytelling.
Is it all over?
Will our industry shrink to a size that allows storytelling to become relevant again? In which denim stands for something? Where jeans offer a stronger sense of identity than non-denim fabrications? And where denim stores are once again pilgrimage destinations?
It may be too late to change course, as the natural process of weening out the weak is already underway. Yet those that have the know-how and will to pivot in the right direction can be tomorrow’s superhero brands. Don’t be another Nokia! Denim needs to get real. Now.
Tilmann Wröbel is the founder of Monsieur-T, the ‘denim lifestyle’ studio. He started his career as a haute couture designer before moving into streetwear and denim. He has worked as a designer and consultant for some of the world’s top brands. He is based in Dusseldorf, Germany, and Biarritz, France.
Monsieur_T_official/Photo: Christian Geyr
A street in Harajuku is one of many top shopping destinations in Tokyo.
All photos: Tilmann Wröbel
