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It's a commonly heard gripe that globalization and the information age now have all of us worldwide sporting pretty much the same looks. It's reassuring then to step out onto the streets of Tokyo and be confronted with styles seemingly unique to Japanese shores (and if you can't make the trip, street snap sites such as DropTokyo (http://droptokyo.com) will take you there).

But how to make sense of this abundance of innovation? How to distinguish the emergent trend from the simple one-off? Anthropologist Anneke Beerkens, originally from Holland and now a researcher at Tokyo's Bunka Fashion College, helps sort the wheat from the chaff with her just-published tome 'Fashion Gods - Neo Tribes In The Streets Of Tokyo' (http://www.tenuedenimes.com/journal/blog/2011/6/1/neo-tribes-in-tokyo-by-anneke-beerkens)

In the book Beerkens gives deep insight into the city's nascent fashion tribes and identifies their prime movers. Available from Amsterdam's 'denim-inspired boutique' Tenue de Nîmes (http://www.tenuedenimes.com) with international distribution set to follow. For now, get a taste for the quality of Beerken's writing with this superb article on Japan's longstanding love affair with Americana, which you can read for free here: http://issuu.com/nimes/docs/journal_no07


Susumu Kusamura