Move over Gucci. Here comes Forever 21. Trend-conscious Japan is outgrowing its longtime love affair with luxury brands and turning to a new passion: fast fashion.
The star brand of American mall-style clothing — reputed for delivering runway looks at cheap prices — opened on Thursday last week in Matsuzakaya department store in Tokyo’s upscale glitzy Ginza district.
In a move symbolic of the shift to bargain hunting in slowdown-struck Japan, Forever 21 is replacing what was a Gucci boutique, packing five floors with colorful racks of US$4 tank tops and US$17 frilly skirts.
“It’s a surprise to find good bargains in a department store,” said Fusako Suzuki, one of the first customers, clutching her purchase of eight items, including socks and summer tunics, adding up to a thrifty US$100.
“I used to go to expensive brands when I was single but not any more, now that I’m married,” the 33-year-old pharmacist said of former favorites like Burberry.
The department store replaced Gucci with Forever 21 in the hope of drawing more business and is offering freebies and discounts to those who buy merchandise worth US$22 at Forever 21.
The new Forever 21 store is just its second in Japan. The first opened in the teenybopper Harajuku district a year earlier, drawing a line 1km long. Its aisles are still overflowing with shoppers, who are buying up Forever 21’s street-style wear with the same frenzy for local brands famous for kawaii, or cuteness.
The second store seeks to cater to an older but young-at-heart crowd in Ginza and has a children’s section. It drew a shorter line for the opening but it was packed compared to the rest of the department store.
Ginza still boasts its established European brands such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Hermes, carrying price tags of thousands of US dollars, including a Gucci store around the corner from Forever 21.
But its landscape is changing with the arrival in recent years of Swedish chain Hennes & Mauritz AB, or H&M, Zara of Spain, and Japan’s own fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo.
Younger Japanese are becoming more frugal than their parents and more confident about how they dress, rather than depending on high-end brands for status.
They also love the variety available at Forever 21, which updates its stock every day, says Paul McInnes, editor of Tokyofashion.com.
“The stores have copies of luxury brands, but they are produced very quickly — and very cheaply,” he said.
But McInnes and other experts warn foreign brands can fail in Japan, and the key is not only speed and price but also being in tune with local tastes.
Among the imports that appear to be struggling is US brand Abercrombie & Fitch, which opened in the Ginza, across the street from Forever 21, in December, analysts say.
Although the skimpily clad male sales clerks drew initial media attention, the crowds have dissipated, partly because some of its clothes are sold at double its US prices.
That’s something that may have worked in the past but no longer because Japanese check prices online and more have shopped in the US.
The look was also all wrong, given the trend here for androgyny in men — just the opposite from the macho casual attire being pushed by Abercrombie & Fitch, says Timothy Schepis, a fashion expert who consults for businesses setting up shop in Japan.
“Japanese consumers’ priorities have changed a lot since the recession. They’ve become more mature shoppers due to the Internet, where they can find the prices of things easily and multiple places to compare,” he said.
The Forever 21 chain, based in Los Angeles, has grown since 1984 to 480 stores in 15 countries. It is hoping to open some 10 stores a year in Japan. Two are set to open in this month, said Executive Vice President Lawrence Meyer.
“Japan is our No. 1 market in Asia,’’ he said. “We are very pleased with the way the Japanese customer has accepted our brand.”
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and