EDITOR’S LETTER
As a callow twentysomething publicist I once lunched with Japanese fashion icon Rei Kawakubo. Dressed in her signature black and reserved to the point of shyness, she spoke quietly and economically through an interpreter. It was the 1980s and the fluid asymmetry of Kawakubo’s influential Comme des Garçons label represented the antithesis of the decade’s power dressing and hedonistic excess. It was exciting to see the aesthetic swathe that Kawakubo and her then partner, Yohji Yamamoto, were cutting through the fashion world. It was a look I craved and I still wince when I think of the pounding my oversize Comme des Garçons suits gave my poor, under-nourished credit cards. Strange, then, that I waited several decades to visit the source, decades in which the Japanese impact on design — from automotive to architecture to furniture and street fashion — has been immeasurable. And to corrupt the words of the late critic Kenneth Tynan, I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Tokyo. The city is intoxicating, and in its bewildering sprawl I found unexpected beauty to rival London, Paris or New York. And what a privilege it was to meet some of Japan’s leading interior design practitioners — Masamichi Katayama (page 54), Shinichiro Ogata (page 64) and Yasumichi Morita ( page 60). From profififiles of architect Kengo Kuma (page 96) and artist Maio Motoko (page 92) to a reflflflection on the legacy of American-Japanese designer George Nakashima (page 87), this issue explores the intriguing paradox of Japanese design — an apparent hyper- modernity that rigorously respects the past. As a Tokyo neophyte I felt unqualifififified to introduce our 24- page Tokyo special, produced in association with Lexus. Instead, Vogue Living’s Melbourne editor Annemarie Kiely — a self-confessed Japanophile — has penned the introduction (page 50) and her words succinctly express the city’s other-worldliness. “If Tokyo was an epic story bound on the bookshelf, its dust jacket would describe a spiritual science-fififiction set in a near future that continually folds back into the past.”