Before street style photographers and street style blogs, there was FRUiTS. The Japanese magazine, founded in 1997 by photographer Shoichi Aoki, chronicled the style of the different groups of young people that often hung out in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. I don’t remember how exactly I found out that it existed, but I remember being transfixed by the subjects of the photographs. It wasn’t just the fact that they were all impossibly cool but that everyone’s approach to getting dressed was completely different than anything I had ever seen—even the clothes were different. In the pages of FRUiTS, a pair of overalls could be retro or futuristic or from an unnamed, unknown period, simply by the placement of a lone, floating zipper fly on an otherwise untouched silhouette. In 2001 Phaidon published a book of the same name that collected the first years of images, and it became a bible of sorts. I never started dressing like any of the people I so admired, but looking through its pages again and again inspired a feeling not unlike revisiting a favorite book of poetry, I think.
Now 25 years after it launched, the first issue of FRUiTS is being made available in English as an ePub. “Our goal is to make this valuable archive accessible to anyone around the world. The English edition is the first step towards that goal,” Aoki shared via email. Seeing the images again, this time understanding the descriptions appended to each, added another layer to the images. Along with the (now requisite) brand credits that make up an outfit, the subjects identify who did their hair (very often the charming answer is “a friend”), as well as their style points (often a general inspiration vibe or a highlight of their outfit), with answers ranging from kawaii punk to dynamite detective to simply pajamas.
“Being able to read these interviews and name-check the clothes featured in English for the first time, over 25 years later, is a very special thing,” Aoki explained. “There is information that cannot be conveyed by just fragmented photos alone.” Along with the signature images, the magazine also published interviews with designers, and the first issue features a Q&A with Mihara Yasuhiro in the days when he was just a shoe designer. Aoki hopes to publish the entire original run of the magazine in English translation in the near future and is also planning new issues.
“Although FRUiTS [existed] for 20 years, Harajuku fashion has undergone various changes during that time—there have been periods where fashion completely diverted from what is recognized from the early days of the magazine. Back then, FRUiTS fashion was mainstream!” Aoki shared. “It’s important to recognize and document such fashion trends, how they evolve and how they may provide inspiration for this younger generation discovering FRUiTS for the first time.” He added, “FRUiTS is a valuable record of an event that may never happen again.”
