Raf Simons

Question time with Hideo Hashiura ;

What made you open printings.jp?

Hideo Hashiura: I opened LAILA VINTAGE in Tokyo 15 years ago, which carries ‘maison brand’ vintage pieces, with the intention of buying pieces with deep history that I’d edit with my own perspective, to continue with the idea of a new approach to fashion. It wasn’t about looking back, but looking forward. Then in 2013, I opened LAILA TOKIO, which focuses specifically on designer garments from the 90s. We collected a lot of items from Raf Simons, so I started thinking about publishing a kind of reference book that connects with the future. printings.jp was founded by myself and my partner, who I met last year by chance. We found we were both collecting clothes that shared similar emotions, and so decided start a publishing house that conveys history through both clothing and printed materials.

“Through printing materials, we want to show the core essence of fashion, and tell it to the future, to the next generation” – Hideo Hashiura

What was concept behind the publishing house?

Hideo Hashiura: Through printing materials, we want to show the core essence of fashion, and tell it to the future, to the next generation. Since opening LAILA, I realised that many people are looking at current fashion in the same way that I am, that it’s not moving forward as it once did. We launched printings.jp to show what we think and feel about fashion through books.

Tell me a bit about the books you’ve selected, how do you choose what to sell?

Hideo Hashiura: We have two sections – “archive book” and “book archive”. “Archive book” is where we’ll release our self-published books that feature archive fashion pieces, like the very first book 1996-2001 / 2001-2006. “Book archive" is where we set themes like fashion, art and photography, and sell those printed materials. At the moment, we have issues of Purple from the early 00s, and books on Margiela and Comme des Garçons in that section.

I have chosen to look at the work by Raf simons because of his unique ability to combine many art forms to create a single garment, that not only works well as a fashion item but manages to convey messages of political/ environmental issues. The ability to use the human body as a canvas is really inspiring. I should think of way to incorporate this idea of the travelling gallery into my work. I am already looking at printing on to fabric and reworked garments to show the connection we have between our environment and to show that we can show what we are thinking about on the inside our outside in a very physical way. The idea of allowing a garment to show what we do or don't want to see is very interesting, we usually use garments to conceal ourselves, so creating a garment that would "expose" us is something I must explore physically.