PROFILE
Owner and buyer of vintage store "BerBerJin". Opened in 1998 in Harajuku, where many vintage clothing stores line the streets. Since then, he has become a key person in the vintage clothing industry, leading the vintage scene with his overwhelming lineup of products and abundant knowledge. His influence extends beyond Japan to the rest of the world.
From the time he opened his store in a prefab hut with a floor space of 4 tsubo (3.5 square meters), he was determined to become the best secondhand clothing store in Japan.
The starting point of the vintage clothing culture was when Japanese enthusiasts discovered the appeal of vintage denim in the 1980s, and it reached its peak in the mid-1990s. Now, the vintage clothing market as a whole is booming again, even more so than it was then. Berberzine" has been observing vintage clothing culture from Harajuku, both in sickness and in health. Let us talk about its starting point.
-Congratulations on your 25th anniversary. Could you start by telling us how you first became interested in vintage?
Yamada:When I was in high school, a classmate of mine wore 501s, saying "old jeans are a different color. At the time, the current red-ears of " Levi's ®︎ " were on sale, so I bought some myself and tried them on, but the color fading was indeed completely different from the jeans my friend was wearing. Then I went to Metro Gold and bought a pair of 66s (roku-roku) with an amazing vertical fade for less than 10,000 yen, which was my first vintage pair. Then, when I was 19 years old, I bought a dead stock 66 for about 50,000 yen at "Fake Alpha.
. - "Fake Alpha" is famous for its large inventory of dead stock, isn't it?
Yamada:It was great. （. because when we merged with our company (in 2005), we had a large amount of merchandise stored in our warehouse in the US, in addition to what we had in our store. But when we merged, we sold a lot of it to the market price at that time. ......, it was a waste of money. Now it's worth 5 or 10 times what it was then. I wonder why I did that (laughs).
-Did your attendance at Fake Alpha have anything to do with the fact that you opened your first restaurant across the street from Fake Alpha, rather than on Tonchan Dori as it is now?
Yamada:We started out by renting a four-square meter store in a prefab shed across the street from "Fake Alpha". We were trying to catch up with the customers who had left FAKE α. At the time, there were famous restaurants such as Gory's and Voice on Tonchan-dori. At that time, there were famous stores such as "Gory's" and "Voice" on Tonchan-dori, so when I moved the store from the prefab hut, I only had Tonchan-dori in mind.
-I think Harajuku was then and still is the place for vintage clothing, but why did you choose Harajuku?
Yamada:Belle Vergin was started by myself and Furudate (vice president of Belle Vergin). We had decided from the beginning to become the number one vintage clothing store in Japan, so we had Harajuku, the most competitive shopping area in Japan, in our minds. When we were prefabbed, we would go to Los Angeles (L.A.) on Wednesdays to buy items, and when we returned to the store on Sunday night, about 10 staff members from nearby vintage clothing stores and "BEAMS" would be waiting for us, and the moment we put our luggage down, they would start rummaging through it (laughs). They would ask, "How much is this? It was like a flea market.
-It's more like right after the opening of the Rose Bowl than a restaurant (laughs).
Yamada:Yeah . That's exactly how it was. At first, Furudate and I would collect denim and sweatshirts that we were interested in and hand-carry them home, but when we moved to Tonchan-dori, a former "Fake Alpha" staff member named Asami joined us, and we started selling regular items as well. I also started going to other cities outside of L.A. to buy.
-Did you mainly go around to flea markets and thrift shops at that time?
Yamada:Yes, I did. Back then, I didn't have a dealer, and there was no social networking service or Google, so when I arrived in an unfamiliar city, I would go into a gas station phone booth, tear out the thrift store page of the phone book, and check in with a map at a motel to determine the route I would take. ...... . It's unthinkable now, isn't it?
-. but it's like a treasure hunt, it's a dream come true. There are often episodes like ...... where a lot of denim is lying in the barn of a farmer in the countryside, but it's more like that kind of atmosphere.
Yamada:No dreams at all. It's a waste of time (laughs). But there are still stories of digging. There are a bunch of cool young guys going around in L.A. right now, and they are digging out a really nice navy blue, stenciled, retrofit parka from the trash.
