In Artist Uniform, a column for Highsnobiety, Chris Erik Thomas traces how personal style shapes an artist's identity.
Before “multi-hyphenate” became the descriptor du jour for anyone with multiple monetized hobbies, there was Hiroshi Fujiwara. The Japanese legend has done a little of this and a little of that for decades, from crafting custom acoustic guitars with Eric Clapton and sweaters with Loro Piana to ushering in a streetwear revolution in Tokyo.
That latter accomplishment earned him the moniker “godfather of streetwear” for good reason. (Though he’s often quick to wave it off, pointing out that streetwear existed long before he became its bridge.)
Whether he agrees with the title or not, Fujiwara’s work importing hip-hop and skate culture to Tokyo in the ‘80s had a seismic influence. So too did his work in the ‘90s mentoring future Undercover founder Jun Takahashi and the BAPE/Human Made mastermind NIGO, all while running his own influential clothing brand GOODENOUGH.
Through it all, the guiding force hasn’t been a seemingly unlimited store of energy (though that certainly helps). The fuel comes from Fujiwara’s innate taste, which has been gestating since childhood. “I always wanted to be different from everyone else. That sense of individuality was incredibly strong,” he said in a translated 1996 interview with Japanese magazine Men's Non-no.
That desire showed up as early as kindergarten, when he wore shorts even in winter because “they looked way cooler.” Later, he refused the clothes his parents bought him. His teenage fascination with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Seditionaries in the ‘70s pushed him toward punk, planting the seeds for a countercultural perspective that has guided him for decades.
Instinct, more than anything, informs everything Fujiwara touches, from the clothes he wears to the projects he launches through his creative consultancy, Fragment Design. Those projects are innately tied to his approach to styling himself. When he wanted a solid work bag, he didn’t reinvent the wheel or build one from the ground up; he partnered with a great bag-maker like Porter Yoshida.
“My thinking was that Porter is a great company that makes great bags, so if I want to make a bag I should do it with the best in the industry,” he said in a 2019 interview.“Same with sneakers. I don’t want to make my own sneakers because Nike already makes them, so I did it with Nike. Or Moncler, which has a great winter collection, or Levi’s, which makes jeans.”
Fujiwara has always dressed the way he works. These days, that often means wearing an amalgamation of his own Fragment-backed creations: Timberland collab boat shoes paired with Oakley collab shades paired with Bang & Olufsen collab headphones, for example. It was the same in the ‘80s: When he helped usher skate culture into the Japanese consciousness, he wore Stüssy and other Western skate brands. When his GOODENOUGH label shaped street style in the 90s, he wore what he sold at the shop.
For all the collaborations he’s done — enough to fill multiple coffee table books — Fujiwara’s everyday rotation stays restrained: vintage Levi’s and Converse are favorites, as are more modestly designed watches. “In a way, not overdoing it is the essence of the ‘Hiroshi Fujiwara style,’” he said in 2023.
It’s a refreshingly grounded approach; Fujiwara has no façade. His curiosity is front-facing. “I know right away when I like something or feel drawn to it,” he said in an interview this week. “When I design clothes or products, or make music, I'm always sampling things in some way. Things I've seen before, things I like or things that have stayed in my memory.”
On Friday, his time-tested approach to everything will get its due, filling 184 pages of A Magazine Curated By for its 30th issue. Here, Fujiwara is opening up his source material, from a photographic inventory of his possessions to the Tokyo spots that matter most to him. It may be less about clothes than about how he moves through the world, but that’s the point: for Fujiwara, the uniform is everything.
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