Not long now until the Royal Wedding and to be honest over here at Monsieur Fashion we're not mega-interested apart from of course the day off which will allow me to do some lounging, and maybe even spend some time catching up on my reading.
Talking of reading 0ne book I'll be checking out on my lounge-a-thon day off will be Teruyoshi Hayashida's "Take Ivy" - originally published in Japan in the mid 60s, the book is an examination of Ivy league style - ie what the middle class intelligentsia wore during the years before they all got jobs as senators, astronauts, captains of industry, scientists, academics, magnates, novelists, that kind of thing.
In fact, much of Hayashida's book brings to life a world not dissimilar to the one painted (in words, obvs) by JD Salinger in his short stories. Groups of people for whom America was built, and who'd go on to live a life that those outside the USA could only dream of.
What kind of makes Hayashida's book unique is that because of his being from Tokyo the cultural difference means he's able to look at the social and cultural context of his subjects in an extremely different way from the way another American or even a European would.
In Hayashida's lens, the Ivy league campus almost takes on a kind extraterresstriality, and the subjects who walk this planet - the Ivy league students - are treated with great respect and yet like all good photographers Hayashida is transparent - the world goes on around his camera as if he wasn't there.
There's another great book of Japanese photography - some dude who came to the UK in about 1979 and did a similar thing, except it was more day to day life than simply fashion oriented but I've forgotten the name of it . If f from that brief description you recognise it, let me know.
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