Vol 2. Issue 1: Editor’s Message
Welcome to Volume 2: Issue 1 of The COMM!
We’ve been gone for a while, but The COMM is back and raring to go for 2019!
We wanted to start this year bigger than last, so you may have noticed a significant revamping of the website. We’re dedicated to bringing you the same amazing content with major featured guests and collaborators—but now on a grander scale! Watch out for photoshoots, contributors, video content, and more. You don’t want to miss it!
This issue, we’re bringing the community back to where the inspiration first starts—the runway! When a model steps out on the runway, the excitement is palpable. With the promise of that first glimpse of a new collection hanging in the air, the music, lights, and coordinated posing turn the show into a performance piece of its own.
Having been on both ends of the runway as both a model and a spectator, I can tell you how thrilling it is for all. Behind the scenes, the designers are nervous to finally reveal the culmination of that year’s—or their life’s!—work, the models are determined to execute the runway as confidently as possible, the makeup artists and hair stylists are fussing over last minute touches, reaching up on their tiptoes to apply a dab of blusher to their 6-foot-tall model’s cheek, and the caffeine running through everyone’s veins is the only thing keeping us all wired.
From the audience’s perspective, it’s more anticipation. What will I see? What will blow me away? What will I take away from this? The show may not last very long, but the impact a minute can have on a young creative’s mind can influence how they carry out their future work. A designer can always tell you the exact piece, collection, or season it was that made them want to create their own collection. The existence of the runway rejects any notion that you can’t change the (fashion) world in a single minute.
Of course, the runway isn’t just for high fashion—fashion students rock the catwalk at university showcases every year with their raw, fresh talent yet to be moulded and hardened by the industry.
And then… there’s the street.
Fashion in arguably its rawest form. All rules are thrown away on the street. Nothing is curated—mingling in the crowd is a mix of on- and off-brand, couture, and street. In many ways, the street itself is a runway—a guerilla runway where you parade your best outfits for an unsuspecting audience. You certainly can’t say the impact is less than that of a traditional runway!
The fashion of the street has developed its own culture, evolving over the years to form different trends and tribes. Each area in any city has its own distinct flavour—you could be walking through the most couture spot in town until you take a turn down an unknown road and stumble on an experimental group of fashionistas who carry themselves with the same stance you’d find on the runway. After all, as the saying goes: if you got it, flaunt it!
This month we’ll be bringing you to the Runway in all its forms, divided by parts. Part One will cover our very own debut fashion walk at ON-1 Collective’s Vol. 6 event. Being able to put together a show (in a week, I might add!) was a major milestone for us. We’ll walk you through what it takes to put on a show like this—the highs, the lows, the last minute panics—all the way up to the finished product.
Part Two covers the prestigious Bunka Fashion College festival. The well-known Tokyo college puts on a fashion show every year to flaunt its fantastic and innovative student body. The students are young but their talent supersedes their age.
Part Three is the street. Street fashion is well-integrated in a Tokyoites daily life. You see it everywhere: in between the army of suited salarymen dragging their feet down the street to work, there struts a youth with coloured hair and a meticulously chosen outfit to suit their mood for the day.
On a final note, I think it’s time we treat our readers like a real community—the one we intended to create from the start. In order to unite our online and offline community there should be an identifier to mark us as a group. So with that, I greet you into the New Year as—
The COMMunity Members.
Welcome back to The COMM.
Choom
Editor-in-Chief