The 10 Rakish Men

I love looking at Japanese fashion magazines. Though the text is incomprehensible to me - since I don’t read or speak Japanese - the images open up wellsprings of inspiration. The renaissance of American workwear began in Japan in the early 2000s, and the return to tailored clothing of this decade began there as well (some of the best bespoke houses, like Tailor CAID and Sartoria Ciccio, are based in Japan, and there’s no better ready-to-wear line of suits and separates than Ring Jacket). These styles were first found on the pages of publications like Free & Easy (now dearly departed) and Popeye, which feature dapper men from Japan - and all over the world - in get-ups that predict and predate runway ensembles three years from now. Free & Easy also had yearly features on “Dad Style,” and devoted special issues to the archive of Ralph Lauren and the looks of Steve McQueen, which further brought the heritage look to the cultural forefront. Though culture begins on the coast before traveling inward, we’re now finding that this culture originates outside the U.S., no longer from Europe but Japan.

Three years ago my grandmother gave me a copy of The Rake. The Rake is an English men’s magazine - no, encyclopedia, thanks to its heft and careful assembly - and she found it laying around the Delta lounge on one of her many travels. Fast forward, and I still have that copy of The Rake in my bookshelf and reread it every now and then for inspiration, discovering I know more of the makers and subjects than I originally did as the years go on. The Rake also has a Japanese edition, which is more highbrow than rags like Free & Easy were, but showcases the worldwide return to tailoring.

Yuko Fujita, The Rake Japan’s fashion editor, has an eye for style. He finds subjects for the magazine that know the rules, then break them or alter them for their sensibilities. This is this how trends are created - when the masses see a style flourish, like it and decide to copy it for themselves - and it leads the subjects to become style icons, like the people in 2017’s roster of “The 10 Rakish Men.” This year’s edition debuted in print last Friday, but the images of these 10 men circulated around Instagram beforehand.

These ten men come from various backgrounds. There are more foreigners than Americans on the list - save style writer David Coggins, whose habit of wearing suits and separates no matter the occasion merits his inclusion. The list includes shopkeepers, like Kenji Cheung of Bryceland's in Tokyo, a men’s store that seamlessly combines bespoke tailoring, rugged workwear and vintage finds that don’t look out of place among the high-end merchandise. The vintage inspiration stays strong with Tony Sylvester, an Englishman who’s a writer and the lead singer of Norwegian punk rockers Turbonegro. Sylvester’s wardrobe combines shirts from makers like Drake’s with vintage tailoring and military pieces. He’s also singlehandedly resurrected the beret from the dead, and since it’s been spotted on guys in Europe and New York in street style shots over the past few months, it’s primed to hit the runways again in the next couple of years. We can’t forget Oliver Dannefalk, the visual manager for legendary Stockholm shoe shop Skoatiebolaget. Dannefalk is as likely to be spotted wearing bespoke Saint Crispins shoes as he is a vintage Ralph Lauren suit with a classic Italian or Japanese tie. Is there a pattern here? Yes: It's the realization that the best-dressed men - and women - aren’t put together by stylists, but develop their personal style through trial and error and find their clothes from multiple sources. They aren’t afraid to combine artisan craftsmanship with designer flair, topped off with vintage inspiration to create an idiosyncratic look that defies a type or classification.

The beauty of Japanese fashion and style magazines is that they present the style of real people, unlike the American versions of GQ and Esquire. American fashion magazines - though they often feature good writing - pay little care to their fashion spreads, in which carefully posed B and C-list celebrities look like they could double as mannequins in a high-end department store. Japanese rags don’t just focus on designer or on new pieces; they realize that both have value, but in the context of how they work with the rest of a person’s wardrobe. This keeps the magazines realistic while also allowing an escape and further research into unknown worlds, presenting looks that inform the way we will dress in the future.

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