Hiroshi Fujiwara’s latest collection for Moncler Genius is a manifestation of the streetwear godfather’s cerebral vision.
ON STAGE SAT three men, each a luminary in his own creative field. On the left was Hans Ulrich Obrist, feted super-curator and artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries. On the right, Kevin Ma, founder and CEO of Hypebeast, the mammoth digital vortex for streetwear’s latest. And in the middle, sat the anchoring draw to the evening’s assembly: the enigmatic “godfather of streetwear” and founder of streetwear label Fragment, Hiroshi Fujiwara.
When one speaks of the 55-year-old polymath — he’s a cultural consultant, designer, musician, arbiter of cool — there’s no exaggeration in giving him credit for the current state of streetwear. In the ’80s, Fujiwara headed, first to London, and then New York. He surfed subcultures — from punk to hip-hop — absorbing them all, with the intention of introducing them in Tokyo. He reformed ’90s Harajuku with newfangled high-low sensibilities, positioning T-shirts as luxury goods and inventing the notion of drip feeding product in limited quantities long before “drops” were adopted by the likes of Supreme and Nike.
This story is from the May 2019 edition of T Singapore: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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This story is from the May 2019 edition of T Singapore: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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