I found this book from the Articles of Interest series on American Ivy/Preppy style and immediately borrowed it because it sounds very cool. And I was pleased to find that while this book also talks about a lot of the events that the podcast does, it also goes into detail on subcultures not mentioned in the podcast.

Ametora, a terms for the “American Traditional” fashion style, is a book about how post-WWII Japan imported American fashion, developed it, and then re-exported it to the world. A large part of the book focuses on the preppy style (called Ivy in Japan) but Marx also talks about other aspects of American fashion like:

• Yankee
• Harajuku-fashion
• Hip Hop (such as the rise of A Bathing Ape)
• Jeans (including the huge market for vintage Levis)

It was fascinating! I have to admit that I was a bit confused when I saw the photos of the clothes because it just looks like a regular outfit but I guess that’s the beauty of Ametora – it’s become so prevalent it’s practically the default style for many people. Plus, the book basically ends at Uniqlo, which is the default outfit for most guys in Singapore so I shouldn’t be surprised that even the older outfits look familiar to me.

I think the only part of the book that annoyed me was this comment about Takuya Kimura: “Meanwhile, stylist friends of Nigo repeatedly put A Bathing Ape on the ost popular male idol at the time, SMAP’s Takuya Kimura. // These new Bape celebrity ambassadors – pretty faces with questionable talent who appeared nightly on teenage girls’ favorite variety shows – were a far cry from indie gods Cornelius and James Lavelle.”

I mean excuse me? Takuya Kimura is an icon in Japan and probably out of Japan too. The “questionable talent” bit sounds vaguely insulting, especially since he’s trying to explain Japanese fashion and Japanese culture to an American audience – it just sounds like after all the trouble he took to take various subcultures in Japan seriously, he could not bother to do the same for pop culture.

Anyway, apart from that, I really enjoyed learning about the history of various subcultures and thought that the following two points were interesting:

1. The disparity between the Americans and Japanese in post-WWII Japan during its occupation by American forces “gave a veneer of prestige to anything American” – a concept that makes a lot of sense and which I think still endures till this day. In general, I think the reason why American culture is still dominant is because it’s seen as “better” somehow, like how Singaporean-Chinese try to signal higher status by reducing markers of “Chinese-ness” and taking on habits/speech patterns closer to what they think is present in Western culture.
2. The idea that the Japanese adopt American styles without adopting American lifestyles. This is due to the fact that these styles are non-native to Japan. As Marx writes “By virtue of their foreign origin, any corresponding lifestyle must follow from the clothing rather than vice versa.” I actually like this idea of fashion as one component of a lifestyle, because I find that quite a few people have adopted one thing and made it their identity, which is a bit extreme (or maybe it’s ‘American’?)

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book! I would like to read similar books on other subcultures, like Lolita and Hanfu. Especially for hanfu – I think there are quite a few resources on the history of the clothes, but I don’t recall seeing much on why it became popular and how its adoption spread. If you’re into fashion history, especially as an exploration of how it intersects with culture across countries, this is the book for you.