Shibuya, a central district in Tokyo, has gone through big changes over the past few years due to extensive redevelopment triggered by the 2020 Olympics. It means that much of the area now borders on sterile, but there are a few surviving backstreets where the raw edginess of old Tokyo survives.
Koji Kamiya spent the last few months drinking until the early hours on one such backstreet known as Shibuya Hyakken-dana, and managed to charm the street’s various proprietors enough that they allowed him to hold his fall show there. As we lined the street waiting for the show to begin, the sun began to set and the izakayas all came to life, the scent of tobacco smoke and yakitori floating through the air.
It was the perfect setting for what Kamiya does, which is, to put it plainly, clothes for Tokyo’s bad boys. The gangs of lads who loitered around after the show clad in leather jackets and neckties, wearing shades well past sunset and puffing Marlboros under the neon signs—that’s who Kamiya is for, and they wear it well.
On his runway, the clothes this season looked made for a band of roguish Shibuya pirates. Bandanas were tied around heads or were slung next to belt chains on the sides of ripped jeans; models sported rockabilly haircuts, black eyes, and cut lips; and Jolly Rogers were printed on the back of shearling jackets. Faded camo, dirt-colored bombers, and disheveled sweatpants brought the grit, while sweeping coats, subtly sparkling suits, and satiny track pants in murky green added a welcome brush of nighttime glamour.
Kamiya called the collection “Time is Blind,” which he explained as a reaction against social media—that notorious time-suck that churns out trends like garbage, and which people then blindly follow. Meanwhile, time marches on (the soundtrack was provided by a marching drummer percussion band).
The location too was an effort to bring back an appreciation of living in the moment; nostalgia for a time that Kamiya, who was born in 1995, has never known. Perhaps that’s why the collection felt thoroughly modern as it stomped past the coffee shops and bars, many of which remain unchanged since the ’70s.
“I felt a great affinity with [the old stores], which is how I came up with the theme around time,” he said to a gaggle of press as we gathered in a small, lantern-lit shrine at the end of the street. As mired in the past as the setting was, the show itself felt like a new future brewing.
