In the summer of 2007, BoF founder Imran Amed landed in Tokyo for the first time. A young American writer named W. David Marx took him on a menswear tour of the city's back streets of Shibuya and Harajuku. That trip would eventually lead Marx to become BoF's first contributor — apart from Amed himself.
Nearly 20 years on, Marx is still in Tokyo, watching a city that experienced three of fashion's biggest shifts before anywhere else: luxury as a middle-class product, the rise — and now retreat — of streetwear and menswear as a global obsession. Marx is the author of three books on Japanese and global culture. The first, “Ametora,” is about how Japan absorbed, and then improved, American style. The most recent, “Blank Space,” is a cultural history of the 21st century, arguing that something has gone missing from the way we make culture today.
Amed sat down with Marx in Tokyo to discuss all of this and more in what is a fascinating conversation about the state of global culture and global fashion today, and how Japan’s place in it has changed.
Key Insights:
Three Books W. David Marx Recommends
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