Fashion : California Creativity Flourishes in Japan
Los Angeles designer Gregory Poe recalls with amazement the day a group of Japanese manufacturers showed him his chart--the one that plotted his business career far into the hazy future.
“They had a Gregory Poe projection sheet that ran into the year 2000,” he says. “I don’t know where I’m going, but they know where I’m going.”
Poe isn’t discussing astrology. He’s talking about designing fashion collections for the Japanese market, where his apparel and accessories have been sold exclusively since 1981. The Los Angeles native does not produce a collection here.
Since he teamed up with the Tokyo manufacturer, Wacoal, eight years ago, Poe has discovered what it’s like to be “owned” by a Japanese firm. Not only are his designs produced by a Japanese corporation, they are sold there exclusively in 16 independent shops and department store boutiques.
Admittedly, Poe’s arrangement is unusual, but not as uncommon now as when he first agreed to it. And it vividly illustrates the increasing attraction of Japan for a few Californians. They have found the Asian marketplace--with a reputation for impenetra- bility--can be a haven for professional freedom and creativity.
Poe, it should be noted, has a strong whimsical streak. He first made a name for himself in the late 1970s with plastic clothing and handbags containing floating plastic fish.
About a year ago, another Los Angeles designer, Leon Max, with a well-established reputation for his American collection, began designing a separate line that is available exclusively in Japan. He is pleased that he is encouraged to stretch his imagination to the limit for Japanese customers--without fear of violating staid fashion habits. Acknowledging that he sometimes has been “dismayed at the reception” in the States (not always positive) to his more adventurous designs, Max adds that his work “doesn’t have to be bastardized at all” for the Japan market. “I find that the consumers of Japan are somewhat more appreciative of quality and design,” he says.
If there are limits to doing business in Japan, they involve stereotypes of the Golden State, Max says, explaining that California fashion means “movie industry and glamorous, or surf stuff.”
Max noted that California surfwear and related clothing are prominently featured in Japanese stores, as well. The wave-riding mystique has been an important American cultural export.
Shaheen Sadeghi, executive vice president of the surfwear and activewear firm Gotcha, based in Costa Mesa but tied into a licensing agreement in Japan, confirmed that impression. The Japanese connection is “a fairly lucrative business,” Sadeghi said, noting that the Japanese enthusiasm for the surfing look ties in with their current general interest in things American, including old cars and motorcycles. He added that the popularity of surfwear may be at an all-time high both in Japan and Europe, despite the $60 price tag on some swim trunks.
The relative lack of price resistance among Japanese consumers is another factor that pleases the local fashion designers. Poe and Max say their clothes, made from more lavish fabrics and with more detailing than in most domestic lines, have fairly stiff price tags. Max, for instance, says his women’s suits sell for $800 to $900, while Poe said his price range tops out at about $3,000.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of curiosity, locally, in the potential of the California-Japan fashion connection. About 50 people turned out July 29--on a summer weekend, no less--for a daylong seminar on “Fashion Design in the Pacific Rim.” A reprise of the seminar, coordinated by Poe and sponsored by UCLA Extension, is set for Oct. 21.
“There’s tremendous interest,” says Poe, noting that he has evolved in the eyes of others from being an odd duck to a much trendier bird. “When I began in Japan, nobody thought there would be anything going on with them on a power basis.”
The seminars take place against what appears to be a move by the Japanese to increase the availability of foreign fashion labels in their country.
In November, a consumer-oriented “World Fashion Fair” featuring European and U.S. designer firms is planned for the Osaka area of Japan, according to trade reports. The fair follows by only a few months a similar event in Tokyo that reportedly drew 42,000 spectators over three days. And in 1991, a wholesale apparel mart geared to foreign clothing manu- facturers is scheduled to open in Kobe.
How much California apparel businesses will benefit from these developments isn’t clear. But they are additional indicators of the Japanese appetite for Western fashions, already established by licensing arrangements between Japanese firms and big-name European and American designers such as Bill Blass, Calvin Klein and Givenchy.
These arrangements, in which a designer’s clothes are reproduced by a Japanese company, appear to be fairly lucrative. In the eight years since Bill Blass licensed his men’s and women’s clothes for the Japanese market, the business has grown into a roughly $30-million enterprise, Blass vice president Gail Levenstein says.
While Levenstein believes there’s room for growth of Blass’ Japan business, she asserts that all American designers are handicapped in Japan because their labels don’t have an Old World cachet.
“I think that what works the best in the Pacific region are the European names, rather than the American ones,” she explains. “I think we really do take a back seat to the French and Italians.”
Nonetheless, the Japanese penchant for undiluted American style was recently accented by a deal struck to reproduce New York’s Charivari fashion boutiques, line for line, and garment rack for rack, in Tokyo. And Los Angeles designer/ store owner Richard Tyler of Tyler-Trafficante says he has been tentatively approached by Japanese investors looking to strike a similar deal with him.
For the present, California’s slice of this pie seems to be small, at least at the designer level. But those who have had a taste have nothing but raves.
Furthermore, Max and Poe say they are impressed with Japanese retailing savvy and sales support for their designs.
Max specifically praised an effort to develop a composite portrait of his Japanese customer by gathering data such as age and career from everyone who bought his designs.
Another advantage to working in Japan, Max says, is the rich variety of fabrics available.
“The appeal of it is how painlessly one can make painless clothes.”
