Product Description

Presented in an identical format to Phaidon's previous Fruits, published in 2001, Fresh Fruits is a collection of Tokyo teenage street fashion portraits selected from Japan's premier street fanzine of the same title. Published every month by Shoichi Aoki, who is also the sole photographer for the magazine, Fruits was established in 1994 as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. Over the last decade the magazine has grown to cult status and is now avidly followed by thousands of Japanese teenagers who also use the magazine as an opportunity to check out the latest styles and trends. The average age of those kids featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18 years old. Most of the clothes that they wear are a combination of high fashion - Vivienne Westwood is a keen favourite - and homemade ensembles which when combined together create a novel if not hysterical combination. This latest publication of the best of Fruits will follow the original Phaidon publication by including translations of the various Japanese captions that were originally attached to the photographs that list the name, age and clothing of each person photographed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122734 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Turtleback
• 272 pages

From The New Yorker
In 1997, Aoki, a Japanese photographer who specialized in capturing street fashion in Paris, London, and New York, turned his eye to Tokyo's Harajuku district. There young people swarmed the streets in a playful riot of candy-colored, eye-catching ensembles, creatively blending hand-modified designer-label items with T-shirts and thrift-shop finds. Fruits, the magazine Aoki founded to feature his Harajuku photographs, went on to acquire an international following. A previous volume of Fruits pictures appeared in 2001, and in this follow-up the eclecticism seems inexhaustible. The portrait subjects, asked to explain their outfits, are drolly laconic ("boring feeling," "like Snow White"). And though recognizable types-punks, hip-hop kids, jocks-regularly appear, the over-all effect is less that of a tribal identity than of a super-cute costume party.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

One of the first, still the best
Every time I go to Japan, I buy a copy of the magazine "Fruits". I sometimes detour through otaku-town in Osaka to see what's new on the videogame front, and to see what some of the kids are wearing. Aoki's magazine and books (which are best-of collections from the magazines) are immensely interesting and enjoyable when we divorce ourselves of our American mainstream prejudices and see these young people defining their own fashion and developing their own aesthetics, appropriating high and low and non fashion to express themselves. What happened that American youth are generally so homogeonized, everyone essentially wearing the uniform of their declared social group? It's no fun, really, not compared to these kids.

Sadly, the 'Fruits' in Japan are also slowly disappearing, being choked out by conformity and a changing local landscape. A sign of the times, for sure, and not an encouraging one.

Well, borderline expat digression aside, this is a wonderful book. It's a semi-hardcover, real cloth binding, so with care it should last for a long time. There is no text to speak of (aside from some of the kids' names and what they're wearing) so it's an accessible book for - well, literally for anyone. I gave a copy to my eight year old niece last Christmas and she loved it, as did her parents. I have both "Fruits" and "Fresh Fruits" (as well as about ten different copies of the magazine) and they are equally good. If you have lots of books, the bright colors on the spine stand out nicely when these books are shelved, if that matters.

'Bright colors standing out nicely' just about sums up the spirit of these books.

By the way, a few years ago I showed the magazine to a professional fashion-designer friend of mine in New York and he fell in love with it immediately. You'd have to be pretty stodgy not to enjoy this book, highlights of the magazine, and document of a gradually fading, colorful and inventive subculture.

happy about the book
i saw that book when i was in Germany and wanted it ever since. Now i finally have it and i'm very happy about it. I like all the series of the Phaidon books and already have Fruits. The idea of this book is really great and i hope Phaidon will have some more books like this in the future!

Great coffeetable book!
Though it's pretty much the same as the previous Fruits book, I guess it's best if you keep it the way it is.
It's a great quality book, completely filled with photos which are not only unique and beautiful, but also makes you question yourself about what is fashion, and what is acceptable or not on everyday life clothing.

There should be more places around the world like Harajuku.