Tweet
Avant-garde author William S. Burroughs created “Interzone” to represent a metaphorical, stateless area loosely based on post war Tangier, which became a haven for criminals, artists, drug smugglers and tax-evading tycoons due to it’s falling between various rules and laws. The head-quarters of Tatsuro Horikawa, the mastermind behind infamous Japanese clothing phenomenon Julius, seems to occupy a similarly ambiguous place.
Located somewhere in-between various well-known areas such as big city Shinjuku, shopping paradise Shibuya and trend central Harajuku, Sendagaya is hard to classify and the Julius HQ even harder to find. The Atelier is a concrete bunker, whose entrance can only be found hidden behind tight rows of black, high-powered motorbikes and the designers own “Batmobile” lookalike BMW, which he uses for inspirational runs around the city and to connect him to his factory-like Industrial Art Space on it’s outskirts. Once down the steep stairs, one can enter a concrete warren of black clad disciples all intensely engaged in various aspects of disseminating the Julius Aesthetic into the outside environment. It looks more like an anarchist sect or religious cult than a fashion movement, and in
fact, “fashion” is not really a word that Tatsuro Horikawa cares much about. In the space there is original Horikawa designed metal furniture and several of his own bronze art pieces and paintings as well as giant prints from the latest MA shoot. It is here, that he oversees every aspect of the creation of his collections, from the coating on the denim to the music mixed specially for the cat-walk and the pictures for the look-book. Everything is done in-house and much of it, for example the photography and styling, personally by the designer and his assistants.
The man himself is also difficult to track down. Doing much of his designing very early in the morning and finding much of his inspiration very late at night, early evening is the time he spends in production meetings and testing out new designs. In fact it soon becomes apparent that the designer and his staff are usually dressed head to toe in prototypes from future collections as well as his own archive, resulting in pieces on the Paris runway which have already been road-tested to the limit. When in residence, surrounded by staff, clothed totally in black, covered in esoteric tattouage and with his trade-mark intense gaze, he is instantly recognisable. One might say that his soft spoken voice and shy friendly manner come as somewhat of a welcome surprise.
continue reading
Comment