For decades, Tokyo’s fashion scene has held a certain cultural cachet among sartorial enthusiasts. Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Comme des Garcons, Kenzo, Sacai and Junya Watanabe — innumerable brands have helped define Japan’s global fashion identity, but so, too, have Harajuku-inspired subcultures, avant-garde streetwear aesthetics and an overall ethos of impeccable craftsmanship.

However, accelerated by social media, an increasingly weakening yen, a record-breaking tourism boom and the rise of online resale platforms, Japan’s secondhand fashion industry — where many valuable pieces of apparel could once be had for a fraction of their retail prices — is no longer a market for domestic consumers alone.

It’s a global one.

Chicago native Brooke Crum, lead fashion stylist at Tokyo-based personal styling service The Foreign Finds, has watched interest in Japan’s vintage scene surge since the country’s borders reopened after the pandemic. 

“TikTok especially has brought in this whole algorithm of ‘You’ve got to go here, you’ve got to shop there,’” she says. “People are obviously very enamored with what they can access based on where the yen is right now.”

For many visitors, Japan offers access to brands and garments that can be difficult or prohibitively expensive to find elsewhere. Isabelle Truman, a Los Angeles-based freelance fashion editor, says she arrived for a trip in April with high expectations for Japan’s shopping culture and still found herself surprised.

While tourists may view Japan as a bargain, local sellers are facing mounting pressures of their own.

The globalisation of Japan’s secondhand market is also being felt in more traditional forms of dress. In London, kimono specialist Sonoe Sugawara has spent nearly two decades sourcing vintage kimono and textiles from Japan for her store, Furuki Yo-Kimono.

-The Japan Times