Beams turns the page on 40 years

In fashion-savvy circles, the multifaceted Japanese lifestyle brand Beams has a following verging on fanatical. It’s an arbiter of a certain brand of cool that is somehow establishment yet simultaneously underground.

Started as a small shop in 1976 in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood — originally made to look like a UCLA dorm room — Beams specialized in the idea of West Coast style.

“I was born in 1951 when Japan was still recovering from the war and grew up dreaming of the America that I saw on TV and U.S. Army bases,” says Yo Shitara, president of Beams Co. Ltd.

In the four decades since its founding, Beams has blossomed into a global empire, including multiple locations, various in-house lines and worldwide recognition as a trailblazer.

This month Beams released the book “Beams: Beyond Tokyo” (Rizzoli: 256 pp., $55), a picture-filled tome that will satisfy obsessives but also cement the brand’s place as a trailblazer. As menswear fanatics fawn over the never-ending pileup of collaborations (recent examples include Adidas Originals by Alexander Wang and Supreme X Louis Vuitton), the book reminds readers that Beams led the way.

“In our early days, we used to ask brands and manufacturers to slightly adjust certain details to better fit our customers in Tokyo,” Shitara says. “Decades later, people started to call this a collaboration. Our best collaborations are the result of a simple formula that adds some good ideas to a basic product.”

In between visually driven pages highlighting partnerships with a range of companies such as Converse and Birkenstocks to Disney and 7-Eleven, there are Q&As with high-profile fans including director Sofia Coppola and cult designers Chitose Abe of Sacai and Nigo to help give context to Beams’ enduring brand of cool. This month is the end of a yearlong celebration around Beams’ 40th anniversary, and the book is a way to mark the occasion.

“We were searching for ways to look back on the work we have done with great partners around the world,” says Shitara. “Something that would again guide us into the future.”

Photographs by Rizzoli New York

THE NEW book “Beams: Beyond Tokyo” includes a look at how the Japanese lifestyle brand has evolved over its four decades along with an imagefilled overview of the collaborations that have made the company an industry trailblazer.