In Japan, Style = Substance

The Atlantic's Alexandra Harney delivers a striking report on the attitudes of the under-25 set in Tokyo's trendy Shibuya shopping district:

Why are young Japanese women, who as recently as a decade ago were sometimes turning to prostitution to finance their Louis Vuitton habits, losing their lust for foreign luxury brands?

“I’ve never bought anything from a luxury brand, so I really wouldn’t know,” laughed Mika Urasawa, a 20-year-old assistant at the 109 shop Rose Fan Fan, as she helped me into a puffy black jacket with fake-fur trim. “If I bought something from one of those brands, I’d probably spend a fortune on it and a year later it’d be out of fashion anyway.”

As those of us obsessively following this Economaggedon have learned, US economists have been scrutinizing Japan's actions in the early 90s when its economy suffered from the collapse of — yep, you guessed it —a bubble of over-inflated real estate and stock prices.  What followed was a ten-year slump that the Japanese economy has yet to recover from. 

The young men and women quoted here would have spent their teens — a crucial time when consumer habits are developed — during this "lost decade" of Japanese stagflation.  It shows. They shop, but instead of brands, they seek out value and individual expression: 

Today, “it’s not about how much money you have,” [Keiko] Sakurai said. “It’s about expressing your own personal style.”

For young Japanese, as for youth everywhere, the more that personal style differs from their parents’, the better.  Junpei Kosaka, a 26-year-old advertising executive, can afford to buy luxury brands but chooses not to. Brands like Armani, he sniffs, are “for rich old dandies.”

Marie Antoinettes of the world, it's time to take a page from the youth of Shibuya's look books: stop hiding behind outrageously-priced labels and start developing a style from true value that will survive any economic tsunami.