Tokyo vs. Shanghai: A style standoff
by Kaori Shoji, NYT
There's no doubt about it, Shanghai is now the most exciting city in East Asia, usurping Tokyo's position as No. 1.
Says Kenta Mitsui, a 29-year-old photographer who moved from Tokyo two years ago: "I stand on a street corner back home and, well, it's just a street corner. In Shanghai, the streets are so vibrant, buzzing with energy, it's like the very air is reprimanding me for daring to just stand there. I should be working, going out, making tons of money, whatever, something, ANYTHING! That's the air you breathe in Shanghai."
Mitsui is one of a growing number of Japanese artists who have abandoned Tokyo and bypassed New York and Paris to put their money on Shanghai.
"In eight more years,"Mitsui predicts, "Shanghai will have outdone Tokyo in everything from fashion to music to art, and let's not even discuss architecture."
While that still remains to be seen, it's true that Tokyo's fashion and design industries can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to Shanghai's colossal influence.
Mito Yokokawa, who had worked for a Japanese apparel company and now lives in Shanghai as a media consultant-interpreter, says: "I think the Japanese woman has a lot to learn from China, particularly a city like Shanghai, where the women are attractive, strong-minded and bursting with confidence. Before, Tokyo fashion had been a lot about blending influences from the catwalks of Paris and Milan into generic brands, but I have a feeling that will change."
Indeed, Japanese fashion magazines now routinely carry articles about Shanghainese methods of makeup and style while exhorting the nation's women to adopt Chinese traditional tips on beauty maintenance. (Apparently, it's the tea. Tea, tea, tea!)
Yokokawa says she never ceases to be amazed by the perfect skin textures andthe well-defined, statuesque physiques of Shanghai women as opposed to Japanese women, whose physiques tend to be flat and uninteresting. "And Chinese women are more energetic, vibrant, strident. As a Japanese living in this city, I'm always kept on my toes."
The Japanese textile manufacturer Itokinfeels the same way. While there's nothing new about a Japanese apparel company setting up in China, Itokin has taken the formula a step further to create its very own, Chinese- Japanese brand called Sujet. Scheduled to be started this month, Sujet is helmed by the Shanghainese designer Jonii Ma and Yuma Koshino, scion ofthe Koshino family - of the London- based designer Hiroko Koshino. It aims to create a clothing line that would match the tastes of urban, professional women in both Shanghai and Tokyo.
Ma, who speaks flawless Japanese and has been working in Tokyo for the past 10 years, says the time is ripe for just this sort of brand to hit the two cities.
"Asian fashion has always been about looking young, cute and desirable well into one's 30s," she said. "I think we're a little tired of that. Sujet targets working women in the crucial years between 28 and 38, when they're super- busy trying to balance work, family, marriage, childbearing ... and still continue to look and feel beautiful! I hope this brand will allow these women to feel pampered and privileged and, at the same time, empowered."
In the meantime, Itokin will have totaled its number of outlets across China to 350 during the year.
Ma, who herself is the epitome of East Asian chic (she favors her own creations combined with Viktor & Rolf), flew to Shanghai from Tokyo, with a staff comprising some of Japan's most prominent advertising talents. They were to decide on a model to represent Sujet, and an audition that promised the winner 450,000 yuan, or about $56,000, was held in the Shanghai Itokin building. The prize went to a local model called Jin Jin, who at 23 already owned two condos and looked upon modeling as a business venture.
"We're happy with the result," said Hideki Nakashima, the art directorwho was hired by Itokin to create Sujet's publicity stills. "Both the brand and Jin Jin speak of East Asia in the 21st century in a way that's beyond the prowess of the purely Japanese version. Frankly, I think we should see more of this sort of integration-collaboration going on."
Nakashima professed himself dazzled by the leaps-and-bounds progress of Shanghai, the general feeling of anything goes. "In Tokyo, the creator is hampered by red tape, laws written and unwritten, plus rigid codes of behavior. One doesn't feel that here."
The Shanghai architect Teng Kun Yen says, however, that the city still lags far behind Tokyo in terms of aesthetic design standards. Originally from Taiwan, he laments the fact that the Shanghainese are so willing to cut off all ties to history and tradition in the mad pursuit of wealth and ever larger commercial opportunities: "In such an environment ... true design cannot be nurtured."
Teng is a Japanese design fan. He bought his entire wardrobe from Issey Miyake and designed his staff's uniforms with concepts borrowed from Miyake's Pleats Please line. He is in the midst of converting a district of derelict factory sites into a space consisting of gallery, hotel, café, restaurant and boutiques that are at most, three stories high, with intricately precise details that he sees as a quintessential factor in Japanese design.
"Maybe Tokyo wants to learn from Shanghai ... but I think the feeling is mutual," he says. "Right now, there are signs that a creative dialogue is about to flourish between the two cities.
"And really, that's the most important thing, isn't it?"