Japanese Fashion Designer
Posted by: kirin on 
Apr 6th, 2010 | 
Filed under: Fashion, Tokyo Kawaii TVJapanese Fashion Desiger
31/OCT/2009 on air
23-year-old Yamaguchi-kun is a king of street snap. He is working for a fashion brand at the same time he is a designer working from a 6-mat room in Tokyo. He also took part in Tokyo Kawaii Collection as a representative designer and a model to men’s fashion department. His job is a full-time employee at an apparel company but he also owns his brand.
Men’s high-heeled shoes are one of his outstanding works. He bore the cost as much as 200,000 yen (about USD2000) by himself to get the trial model made from his design. Yamaguchi-kun says, “I have this strong belief that men’s high-heeled shoes will become a standard!”
Castelbajac evaluated Yamagichi-kun and his high-heeled shoes at the Tokyo Kawaii Collection in Paris, and he offered Yamaguchi-kun if he is interested in working as an assistant designer to him.
Yamaguchi-kun was ready to leave for Paris to work for Castelbajac. He was waiting to hear from Castelbajac but 2 months have passed with no news since then. He asked Rinshu for an advice and he decided to write an email to Casterbajac. His English is so poor he needed one hour to complete a single email, while he received a reply from Casterbajac within 10 minutes. He arranged his agent, Murai-san in Japan so Yamaguchi-kun can talk to him instead. It was 2 weeks after the email exchanges that Yamaguchi-kun finally met up with the agent for an interview. There are 47 stores of Castelbajac in Japan. He is trying to launch a new brand targeting late 10s and early 20s. He showed interest to Yamaguchi-kun as one of his assistants for the brand.
Another 2 weeks from the interview with Yamaguchi-kun, Murai-san had a chance to visit Castelbajac in Paris, when he carried Yamaguchi-kun’s latest works. He told Castelbajac what he felt against Yamaguchi-kun at the interview. Castelbajac called Yamaguchi-kun to tell him that he is going to see him at his next visit to Tokyo. “We need creativity that Japanese designers have.” says Castelbajac. Yamaguchi-kun started to sell his vintage collection sneakers to exchange them for cash to leave for Paris. He has been collecting sneakers for over 10 years since he was a jr. high school student. He sold 85 pairs of sneakers but they were only for 380,000yen.
Kirin’s opinion:
I feel it’s a pity that many Japanese people still suffer from English. Even if this young designer can work with Castelbajac, how can they communicate each other? It’s such a pity to think of so many talented Japanese people who have to lose opportunities because of language barrier. At the same time I wonder what our English study was as a mandatory education which we had started from jr. high school (today it starts from elementary school). 
Wish him good luck!
***There are archives of episodes listed under the page titled “Tokyo Kawaii TV” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.
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April 6th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Awesome episode! I think it's brilliant to have high heeled shoes for men since over here, they have lift insoles that can make you an inch taller or so. Most American women don't like short men (I love short guys) and won't approach them in bars and clubs. Hope you're doing well
April 6th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Japan has a population of about 128 million. I am sure some of them speak something other than Japanese and I am sure there are millions of Japanese outside of Japan. Still with a worldwide human population of almost 5 billion,that is a small group of Japanese speakers. It is no wonder that English is taught in Japanese schools to everyone. But I doubt that most of the students take their English studies seriously. On top of all of this Japanese and English are soooooo different that it is difficult for Japanese to learn English. And vice versa. Japan will always have a la?nguage barrier to deal with when doing business with geijin. But, for someone like Kerin, that is a good thing. More customers for her. Perhaps you could offer your services to him as a translator? Would traveling worldwide be a problem for you
April 7th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I'm surprised that he didn't have someone check his English for something so important. I felt kinda sorry for him on the telephone. Speaking on the phone is really difficult, and the designer had such a strong French accent.
I hope he ends up getting his dream job in France.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Aha! American men are making efforts to attract women with insoles! That's interesting. There are many short guys in Japan, and these high heeled shoes will help them a lot…but wait, our culture makes us take off shoes, which means soon they will have to confess the secret, haha… ^ ^;
April 8th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
If only I could help these people…
But it's really weird why we need that much time to be able to have a good command of English? I know English and Japanese are so different languages but, it's just way too much. Our education should be wrong, the way we are taught should be wrong.
When I graduated from university, I thought of becoming an English teacher at an English school but on second thought, I didn't because 10 years later many of us may have less problems in English and I may not be able to continue the job or the English school may not continue their business any longer. It's been over 10 years and how things have changed? My second thought was completely wrong. Nova is gone but all the major English schools are still alive.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I know~. Telephone conversation is sooo difficult. I once worked for a foreign company only as a temp, really temp like 1 week or so. There's no way I knew who those who called me. They spoke their name over the phone but I was not sure how to spell it out. But I had to ask that in order to leave notes. They were like, "…Hello?!" because they were regular clients who always made phone calls to the company. I must have sounded so weird to them, and I explained them my situation against my will. (>_<)
April 9th, 2010 at 8:42 am
oh i feel somewhat touched when i watched this episode… i am rooting for Yamaguchi san! He has such a strong belief in his dream! If he continues his route with this same spirit, his dream will definitely come true. Go Go Yamaguchi!! ^^
I'm kind of inspired by him! Nice episode! ^^
April 10th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Oh, this episode was really interesting – I hope it goes well for Yamaguchi-san. What a great opportunity for him if he can collaborate with such a wellknown designer. I really wish him luck!
I agree with you though, things would go a lot more smoothly if his English was up to scratch. It would be a shame if this opportunity was wasted because of such a minor detail. I really feel for him with that phone conversation though, that's tough stuff at any level really!
April 10th, 2010 at 11:05 am
It's always nice to see those who make efforts to try to make their dreams come true.
April 10th, 2010 at 11:09 am
When I updated this episode, I kinda checked out his website (from serching) and it looks like he is still in Japan…I wonder if everything's still on the move or… o_o;
July 26th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Wow love the fact that there is some young inspiring Asian fashion talent. Might have to feature this on my website.
August 6th, 2011 at 11:29 am
I watch the full content of the video that you have in the post and it was long but it's fun to watch and know what are the life of fashion designer in Japan. just like other fashion designer, he have lots of shoes, dress and accessories that he used on different occasion and depending on his mood as well I bet.,
September 19th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
It's always interesting to learn about fashion design in other cultures. Also, posting a video helps us to see what it is you are describing.
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