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Turning Japanese? At the Design Exchange Tonight
A late breaking fashion-meets-design report from Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter:
If you want to find Japan’s cutting edge fashion, hit the streets. For years now, teenagers in Japan’s cities have been borrowing, improving and experimenting on any number of cultural influences: everything from Hip Hop and Goth culture to Japan’s own formidable design aesthetic. No Kimono, an exhibit of fashion inspired by Japanese street fashion, tries to bring this energy to Toronto.
Curator Rafi Ghanagounian, who also gave us last year’s breathtaking Tokyo Doll show, brings together designers from Japan and Canada for this month long exhibit that launches tonight at the Design Exchange with, what else, a fashion show.
Ghanagounian and crew also invited influential photographer Shoichi Aoki to town to lecture Sunday at the Edward Day Gallery. Aoki has been photographing Japanese street fashions for over a decade and also publishes FRUiTS, Tune and Street, three magazines that report on but also fuel the dizzying fashion scene in Japan. Will all of this translate into more adventurous fashions in town? Torontoist can only hope so.