Tokyo November 2013 SFD Retailshop Safari

TOKYO NOVEMBER 2013

S F D R E TA I L S H O P S A F A R I

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As it was mine and Steve’s first time to Tokyo and we had a day to spare, I was recommended to a guide who specialised in Retail safaris .I was told she was good, and she was amazing. We were collected at 8am and finished after midnight. It was a truly inspirational day Tokyo’s retail reputation proceeds itself and it didn’t disappoint I cant wait to go back.

Below is a brief summary of the areas we visited and some of the retail stores we saw there.

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D A I K A N YA M A A N D T H E T S I T E

Daikanyama Tsite is a campus-like complex for the Japanese book music and movie giant Tsutaya. It is located in Daikanyama, an upmarket, but relaxed, low rise Tokyo shopping district. Slotted between large existing trees on the site (known as “library in the woods”), the 3 pavilions are organized by a magazine street that threads internally and externally through the complex. Tailored particularly to the over 50 “premium age” customers, people with plenty of free time and disposable income, Tsutaya’s normal product range is complemented by a series of boutique spaces carrying carefully curated product ranges. The stationery zone is worth seeing just for its display walls of pens - some 1000 different pens are on display and for sale.

Other facilities include a café, an upscale convenience store and the Anjin lounge where visitors can browse a library of classic design magazines and books or peruse artwork for sale as they eat, drink, read, chat or relax. Externally the perforated screens of the fascade are formed from the T’s of the Tsutaya logo while much larger T shapes are disguised in the building plans and elevations.

The Daikanyama store is positioned as a third space between home and work where customers are welcome to read, meet friends or relax or work from their laptops for as long as they want. This, we were told, is a growing trend in Japan.

The store also offers concierge services with every section helmed by an expert.

For instance, the travel section’s concierge desk is headed by a former journalist who has visited more than 100 countries and written several guidebooks. The desk can even help customers book holidays. In a perfect world all bookshops would be like this, peaceful, practical and uptown. The Tstaya Books T-site is the perfect reprieve for a wonderful afternoon waiting to happen.

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S H I B U YA

Shibuya is the centre for youth fashion and culture and its streets are the birthplace to many of Japan’s fashion and entertainment trends. Over a dozen major department store branches can be found around the area catering to all types of shoppers Shibuya Hikarie is a new high rise complex with cultural space just east of Shibuya Station. Besides a theatre and exhibition floors, it offers office space on its upper floors and shopping and dining on its lower floors.

There are two Tokyu department stores in Shibuya: the 12 floor Shibuya Station branch sits above Shibuya Station while there is the main 10 floor store a 10 minute walk from the station.

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SHIBUYU 109

As the symbol of Shibuya, with more than one hundred and twenty boutiques on ten floors, Shibuya 109 rises into the sky and marks the centre of a district that has long since come to be the gathering place for young people in Tokyo. It is unique in that it only caters for young people and the building itself has become a word often used to describe the fashion of the teens who shop there and walk the streets of Shibuya. It is famous as the origin of the Kogal subculture. Kogals are known for wearing platform boots a miniskirt, copious amounts of makeup, hair colouring (usually blond), artificial suntans and designer accessories..

Many times a new fashion trend started in 109 will spread rapidly across Japan as teens clamour to pick up on the newest crazes out of the famed hub of teen style.

Beams plus Beams, which started as a small shop in Harajuku in 1976, has since grown into a significant retail force in Japan. Beams Plus is the men’s line launched 1999. You walk into Beams Plus and, not only do you get a glimpse of the clothing you wish you owned, but you get an aroma of the man you wish you were. 1940s to 60s inspired Americana from some of the best Japanese brands is paired with the scents of pine, leather and wool.

– BEAMS PLUS BEAMS

“Kogals are known for wearing platform boots a miniskirt copious amounts of makeup hair colouring.”

– SHIBUYU 109

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F R E I TA G

Freitag was founded by a pair of brothers in a shed behind their family house in Zurich, where Markus and Daniel Freitag assembled a biker’s messenger bag constructed from recycled truck tarpaulins, bicycle inner tubes and car seatbelts. Cut to September 2013, and the brothers’ Freitag brand has opened its second store in Japan. The new space is located in Shibuya, built with a Gotthard tunnel-inspired stereo-entrance system, making the store accessible from both sides.

“Shibuya is filled with great menswear and streetwear shops, but the beauty and youth United Arrows co branded shop is filled with incredible brands. People come from far and wide to check out this great spot.”

– UNITED ARROWS

SUPREME S H U B U YA While one of Supreme’s newest shops doesn’t need much help with the amazing skate brands it carries, the Sphinx sculpture right in the middle of the store certainly makes this a hands down favourite.

From Stationery to toilet seat covers this is the largest household goods store in Tokyo.There’s a new café and exhibit space on the 7th floor with an ever changing selection of small goods from local artisans for sale.The multitude of floors are hard to navigate.

– TOKYU HANDS

“Right next to Shibuya you find Harajuku and whatever you have seen in terms of shopping before you can simply forget when having wandered through the small and narrow streets of the district. One shop stacks up on top of the other with at least 3 stores placed one on top of each other in each building of the entire shopping area. You simply do not know where to look any more and where not Missing one little corner might mean missing several amazing stores.”

– HARAJUKU

F R E E I N T E R N AT I O N A L L A B O R AT O R Y T H O U G H I T M A Y B E D I F F I C U LT T O F I N D , V I S V I M ’ S F L A G S H I P S T O R E I N T H E J A P E N E S E M E N S W E A R A N D F A S H I O N C A P I TA L O F H A R A J U K U I S W O R T H F I N D I N G . W H E N Y O U FIND IT YOU WILL BE AWESTRUCK.

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COMME DE GARCONS

When legendary brand Comme des Garcons open a flagship shop in the mecca of Harajuku one pays attention.

Minimal and playful at the same time, the outside offers a voyeuristic experience for seasoned window shoppers and a look at the artful goods inside

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FORBIDDEN FRUIT CAFÉ

The health-inspired juice bar/cafe known as Forbidden Fruit prefers to go relatively unnoticed – except to those in the know. There are no photographs allowed, no website exists, and there’s not a business card in sight. The nonchalant staff eye you watchfully as you sip your exotic fruit concoction to ensure that you do nothing that will jeopardise the cafe’s covert existence. A contorted chandelier hangs low from the middle of the ceiling. One by one, Japanese twenty somethings, dressed in sharply styled streetwear, walk briskly through the cafe, acknowledging the staff with a tenuous nod before disappearing down a dimly lit staircase. Your curiosity soon gets the better of you and you can’t resist sneaking down the staircase. A provocative aroma of incense greets you as you reach the dungeon-like entryway and your mind races with what lies beneath the depths of Forbidden Fruit…

Forbidden Fruit café is, in fact, the secret entrance to the Bedrock Store. Once you head down the steel stairs cages and chandeliers hang in what seems like the darkened space of a cave or dungeon. The shop is quite amazing.The floor is polished concrete, gleaming but industrial. Everywhere there are sculptures, a diamond–encrusted skull here, an ornate mirror there, a huge bison’s head on the wall, glass chandeliers and various eclectic artefacts.

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The display racks are made of wood and chains. Feathers and velvet lie about. The most amazing part is in the back where an atrium houses tropical plants that are stuffed in like the Amazon. This glassed-in tropical area is to the back of the store where cacti ferns and a riot of greenery lie gleaming beyond a wall of glass.

Believe me, this is one of the coolest shopping experiences you will ever have. Lenny Kravitz’ and StevenTyler’s signature scrawled on the concrete staircase are testament to that!

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PA S S T H E B AT O N

Another cool concept was Pass the Baton. This vintage shop promotes a new idea of recycling: pass on things that you truly love. The idea is that if an object is used and not needed anymore, people can pass it along without making new goods (and potential waste) so that each new owner can create their own new memories. Each item sold at Pass the Baton has a backstory – a brief history of the item written right alongside its price – so that customers can have a better understanding of the journey each individual item has traveled and, in turn, feel more connected to the past.

As a member of the 'pass the baton' initiative, people can sell as simply as one would at a flea market, but with the added dimension of optioning proceeds to charity.

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“Omotesandō is known as one of the foremost 'architectural showcase' streets in the world. It is sometimes referred to as "Tokyo's Champs-Élysées, featuring a multitude of fashion flagship stores within a short distance of each other. It is an upscale shopping area featuring several international brand outlets, ranging from Louis Vuitton and Gucci to Gap, The Body Shop, Zara and others. Omotesandō's side streets feature a range of trendy cafes, bars, and restaurants, as well as boutique stores specialising in everything from handbags to postcards to vintage glass bottles.”

– OMOTESANDO

OPENING CEREMONY OMOTOSANDO

Out the Box Opening Ceremony has relocated its flagship store to Omotesando. There are four themed floors including pop artinspired staircases in lilac, baby blue and neon pink A zoological themed floor with Ostriches Llamas and wooden horse jewellery cabinets. Mannequins with eyeball heads greet you at the door and some crazy visual merchandising all makes for a fascinating and fun place to shop.

TOKYO’S TOKYO You feel like you just walked into the pages of a comic book. Design-savvy gift shop, Tokyu's Tokyo, looks to the world of manga for inspiration, stocking hip toys, clothes and accessories with a cartoony twist. In a bold bit of interior design work, the shop itself has been designed to resemble a manga layout, with curved shelves and irregularly shaped display units.

The store is located in Tokyu Plaza, located at the Jingmae intersection (our guide told us up to 1500 people can cross at one time!) Built to be a fashion fun land offering a variety of attractions.

Besides just shopping the biggest attraction is the rooftop terrace on the 6 floor built so the plaza would be in harmony with nature. The artistic décor is not to be missed either. For example the entrance is an impressive seizure – inducing kaleidoscope of mirrors that’s akin to something out of Stargate. th

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K AT E S PA D E S AT U R D AY

Saturday is the bold little sister of Kate Spade, the New York label long famous internationally for its high-quality, brightly coloured and patterned handbags. Despite its American roots, it was in Japan — home to Kate Spade’s biggest non-U.S. market — that the company decided to officially launch the Saturday brand with the opening of its first stand-alone store.

The Tokyo flagship opening coincided with Saturday launching internationally online, tapping into a new generation of global techsavvy shoppers.

The new flagship boutique, located on Cat Street just a short stroll from Omotesando, is an unmissable splash of the brand’s signature yellow both inside and out, from its two-story facade to its interior floors, walls, signage and swirling staircase.

In addition to the apparel are some quirkier inclusions — fun products, such as a natural canvas zip bag containing a modern tic tac toe game, and a space where shoppers can digitally custom design their own Weekender bags.

“Omotesando Hills is a luxury based shopping complex containing over 130 stores and 38 apartments. It is a six-story building consisting of three basement floors and three floors above ground, filled with sophisticated shops for adults, and stylish restaurants. This building replaced the Dojunkai Aoyama Apartments, which were built in 1927. Omotesando Hills was designed by the architect Tadao Ando in 2005 and has been marked by controversy. The building replaced the Bauhaus-inspired Dōjunkai Aoyama Apartments, which had been built in 1927 after the 1923 Kantō earthquake. The destruction of the apartments raised questions about Japan's interest in preserving historic buildings.”

– OMOTESANDO

LOUIS VITTON The LV building is in the image of a pile of trunks piled at random The trunks each representing a unique space are connected by a labyrinth of corridors offering a small journey between trunks.

The interior is stainless steel fabric resembling the fabric lining inside a trunk to match the exterior design. The art space on the 7 floor epitomizes Louis Vuitton’s longstanding relationship with the arts. th

DIOR

Dior’s first store in Japan. The façade is covered in glass, and the inside houses skirtlike acrylic drapes. At night, the building appears to float into the sky, lit up by embedded fibre optics.

TODS

The Tods building is wrapped in a skin of crisscrossed concrete braces and glass that mimics the trees lining the street. The concrete braces also serve as space dividers inside the building where the natural materials, stone, wood and leather, reflect the quality of Tod's leather goods.

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A O YA M A

We continue our Tokyo tour. After having visited Shibuya and Harajuku we continued to Aoyama. The good thing is, that all three of these areas are very close to one another. Once you start getting into the better shopping streets of Aoyama, you realise quickly that, compared to Harajuku, things are a little more settled here. Lots of Japanese and international high fashion designers set up their shops here.

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MAISON KITSUME Maison Kitsume is actually 2 stores. The more contemporary Maison Kitsume looks like its original French mothership, although filled with local touches such as sliding bamboo doors and tatami mats.

KitsumĂŠ cafĂŠ is located at a more secluded spot further down the road, and despite the deceptive name it's very much a retail space as well. The setting here is decidedly more intimate with antique furnishings providing an eclectic contrast and, if you're done shopping, the specially trained baristas pour you one of the best coffees in Tokyo.

MAISON KITSUME

LEXUS INTERSECT Neither a dealership nor a traditional retail space, the store has been conceived as a multifunctional social space where visitors can experience the Lexus experience without sitting behind a steering wheel, but rather through design, art, fashion, culture, film, music and technology. In its two floors, Intersect by Lexus accommodates a cafĂŠ, a garage that can function also as a gallery, a store, and a library lounge which serves light meals.

“conceived as a multifunctional social space.”

– LEXUS INTERSECT

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THOM BROWN

Thom Browne’s first freestanding flagship shop outside the U.S. is in Tokyo. From the outside a gray marble-clad storefront with no signage and a single door. The architecturally sound threestory interior is as clean and business-oriented as Thom Browne's clothing, with minimal branding or signage and a collection that limits you to making the best choice possible. Pretty easy to do since just about everything Browne does is the best.

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PRADA

PRADA

With six floors starting from the basement level, this is the largest flagship store in Japan. The striking crystalline structure appears like a stack of glass blocks, its five-sided shape, the smooth curves throughout its interior, and its signature diamond-shaped glass panes vary between flat, concave and convex “bubbles”. Within the interior everything morphs seamlessly into elevators, stairs, fitting rooms and display shelves, giving a sense of continuous shopping space, very much integrated into the architecture. Many people visit the store solely for the purpose of seeing the building itself, thus making Prada Boutique Aoyama a true “flagship store”.

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BAPE

This Bathing Ape Exclusive (Bape) outlet of the uber hip urban and hip-hop outfitter is more like a museum than a shop, with fab sneakers on a rotating steel conveyor belt, mirrored surfaces and lots of sparkle such as the LED clad staircase.

THE GINZA

The Ginza is another famous upmarket shopping, dining and entertainment district, featuring numerous department stores, boutiques, art galleries, restaurants, night clubs and cafes.

One square metre of land in the district's center is worth over ten million yen, making it amongst the most expensive real estate in Japan. It is where you can find the infamous $10 cups of coffee and where virtually every leading brand name in fashion and cosmetics has a presence. On a weekend the central Chuo Dori street gets closed to traffic and Ginza becomes a large pedestrian zone. You can listen to street music and watch performance artists as well as hawkers selling magical puppets which dance without strings.

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SHISEIDO THE GINZA This is Shiseido’s flagship store where fans of Shiseido can sample makeup and skin care from the company’s different brands.

On the first floor, you can try makeup products from the company’s cosmetics brands. The second floor houses the professional makeup and hair styling salon where you can schedule a makeover and get your photo taken. On the third floor you will find the personal beauty session lounge where you can schedule a professional makeup session or a facial treatment. On the 1 floor there is a clever piece of technology called the Mirai mirror.This is a make up simulator that allows you to try on the make up “virtually” by scanning the barcode on the product you like and then looking at the results staring back at you! st

UNIQLO GINZA The Ginza flagship, which has twelve floors and takes up an incredible 5,000 square meters, is the company’s biggest store in the world. Designed

by Wonderwall’s Masamichi Katayama, famous for his innovative work with BAPE and chic Parisian boutique Colette. While Uniqlo is celebrated for its low price points and staple, basic apparel, the Ginza store goes one step further and introduces its large and diverse customer base to a whole host of exciting collaborations such as cult film maker David Lynch.

“The store has an amazing glass atrium on the first floor where the mannequins become part of the architecture.”

– UNIQLO GINZA

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HERMES GINZA

This thin, tall, elegant building stands out like a piece of well-crafted jewellery; its faรงade is made entirely of specially designed and fabricated glass block. In the daytime the translucent facade gives a hint of what is beyond, At night the entire building is glowing from within. On the exterior, at eye level, the glass block facade is punctuated with clear glass blocks which display Hermes products beyond.

DOVER STREET MARKET At the back of the Uniqlo stores lie six stories of glass and steel propping up more than 60 fashion labels in a former office building in Ginza. Seven years after the “anti” department store hit London, Comme Des Garcons founder Rai Kawakubo has imported the concept to her hometown. There are a variety of custom displays: giant metal spirals and arches and imaginative wood vitrines that envelop the merchandise in between the whitewashed walls. There are some of the London themes repeated Ginza style such as the corrugated changing room “hut”. But the Tokyo store has many of its own quirks such as the oversized plaster fly,fallen rose and most significantly the amazing wall of giant spindles that obscure the elevator bays.

DOVER STREET MARKET

NICOLAS H AYA K B U I L D I N G This is the innovative HQ building of the Swatch Group in Japan. The greenerycovered building houses all seven watch brand shops (Breguet, Blancpain, Glash端tte Original, Jaquet Droz, Omega and Swatch ). Each is reached by a separate hydraulic glass elevator which also serve as a mini showroom.

HANKYU Japan is the home of the giant department stores, and one of them is the Hankyu chain of department stores.

The new store in Ginza, “Hankyu Men’s Tokyo” has a slogan which translates into something like “For the men on the world’s stage”. The nine-storey shop features everything a man could possibly want, from suits to casual wear, and from accessories to fragrances there is also a floor dedicated to grooming and relaxation. All the international brands you can think of are here as well as local ones too. In the basement is the world’s first Monocle Café. Shopping is tax free for international visitors and you can get your own interpretor on the first floor. I want one in London now!

HANKYU

TOKYO NOVEMBER 2013

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