A week or so ago I shared a couple of trailers for my friend Niko‘s upcoming TOKYO X CREATIVES video series, and here’s a third trailer, this time for the episode that will feature the gaming/clothing shop Meteor, located in Kichijoji. Niko did a presentation on the project at last week’s PechaKucha Night Vol. 89, and it should be up on the PK site within a week or two.

That Graniph thing I teased last week? Details are now posted on SNOW Magazine, so go have a look. In short, every month I’ll be selecting my five favorite Graniph tees (produced during the previous month) to giveaway on the site, and at the same time we’re enlisting everyone to recommend artists who should work with Graniph, with the idea to produce a tee.
Pictured, one of the tees I’ve selected for this month’s contest, “Vale Tudo.”

Feels like I’m due for a bit of teasing, so how about this: Be sure to check out SNOW Magazine on Monday for a bit of news in regards to something that involves everyone’s favorite design tee brand, Graniph. I won’t say too much, just that you will have a chance to get something, and maybe even help get a tee made. Even better, it’s going to be a regular thing.

There’s a new Néojaponisme podcast up, featuring Marxy and Patrick Macias discussing Tokyo fashion, past and present.
Sometime in November, Marxy of Néojaponisme and Patrick Macias — author of such books as Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo and Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook — met in Inokashira Park and recorded a very long podcast about Harajuku and the past, present, and future of Japanese fashion. The result spans over an hour and twenty minutes, and yes, we edited out a lot of the boring parts. Hear Marxy talk about the minutiae of his first visits to A Bathing Ape in 1998. Hear P. Macias talk about the high-pressure sales staff at Shibuya 109-2. Good news: it ends on an optimistic note.

Here’s a look at an upcoming t-shirt for OPEN Skateboards, based on the Kiyoshi Awazu homage board. The tees will be very limited, and should go on sale on the site soon.

Some good news if you’ve been wanting to get your hands on the Peace Sweater — which I covered in my “On Design” column last month — as it’s now available for purchase online through the TAB Shop.

A fun idea, if possibly a maddening one: Rroomm is a clothing shop in Osaka that was recently renovated by architects Ninkipen, and the main feature is a series of eleven doors, six of which are fake. Via Dezeen.

I’ll have the list of participants from last night’s PauseTalk (Vol. 36) up later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime I wanted to share the latest round of portraits taken by Max Hodges, which are all viewable in this gallery. As with last time, I’m really loving these, and I’m hoping that Max keeps doing them, and then maybe culminate in some sort of exhibition to celebrate the fourth anniversary of PauseTalk next year. Max is also talking about compiling PDF books of the shots, which I think is a great idea.
And in case you’re wondering, the t-shirt I’m wearing is Gelman‘s “Sorry I’m Late!” tee he did for Uniqlo a couple of years back.

Marxy explains the success of Uniqlo over at The Business of Fashion blog. My favorite bit from the piece:
In fact, perhaps the brand’s most powerful asset is its neutrality. Wearing Uniqlo carries no meaning of its own. It’s as close as apparel has ever come to interchangeable LEGO blocks.

The Comme des Garcons brand has opened a new concept store in Omotesando Hills called Trading Museum. As noted in this Wallpaper piece,”the space features eight expansive display cabinets on loan from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.” Via Dezain.net.

Remember those great jikatabi shoes that were covered in PingMag a couple of years ago? The team behind them have now launched a new site, Japonista Sole, with a variety of new designs, the first collection launching in December.
Some of our designs have started pre-orders already, so we hope you can catch your size before it runs out. Our initial release will be a limited version of the first series with only 300 pairs for all sizes available, so they will definitely be rare after they sell out.
Our release pattern will be in sync with the changing seasons and motifs of Japan. Our inspiration is to be the “Sole of your soul” and “Soul of your sole” and under the cool concepts of Japonista, we dare to share an alternative and refreshing taste of our approach to designing the jikatabi to the rather flamboyant and extrovert senses of foreigners and fans of Japanese culture worldwide with a little spice of shibui-ness , or whatever it means. Err. with wabi sabi and zen touch but essentially kawaii and cool!

Camera freak and fellow PauseTalker Tim Rudder has made available a t-shirt he designed featuring a rather detailed illustration of the classic Rolleiflex 3.5 Tessar camera — you can order one online here. Next up is the Canon A-1.

A bit late on this — got lost in my “things to post” list — but last month TABlog covered the opening of the new Yuka Contemporary gallery. It’s located in a neighborhood around Waseda University — so just a bike ride away from my house — that used to be known for washi production.
The next exhibition, “Dream Conscious,” is a show curated by Kosuke Tsumura of Monaka, “an experimental unit [...] that explores the potential of fashion outside of clothing” (November 6 to December 12).

Patrick Macias posts a fun gallery of photos featuring Yuka, a 6%DOKIDOKI shop girl. Also check out the latest issue of Japanese gaming bible Weekly Famitsu for a collaborative article with Otaku USA.

Tokujin Yoshioka redesigns the Pleats Please Issey Miyake store in Aoyama — see photos of the new interior at Dezeen.