2008 Japanese Fashion Trends

Mekas has a great story and photo gallery on the Japanese Fashion Trends of 2008.

Looking back, 2008 was not a particularly dramatic year for Japanese fashion. There was some good news: the industry did not succumb to total meltdown and panic, and some brands like Uniqlo, Cher, and Journal Standard managed to pull off impressive growth. But there was also the inevitable bad news: Japanese consumers’ seemingly-unflappable passion for European luxury goods took a major hit. Demand for import goods had been slowly thawing over the last decade, but the global economic crisis this autumn guillotined most lingering desires for conspicuous consumption