Fresh Fruits Book

Street fashion photographer Shoichi Aoki brings you a brand new collection of 'fluffies' and 'spikeys' from the streets of downtown Tokyo. Presented in an identical format to Phaidon's previous Fruits published in 2001, Fresh Fruits is a collection of portraits of Tokyo teenage fashionistas selected from Japan's premier street fanzine of the same title. Published every month by Shoichi Aoki, who is also the sole photographer for the magazine, Fruits was established in 1994 as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. Over the last decade the magazine has grown to cult status and is now avidly followed by thousands of Japanese teenagers who also use the magazine as an opportunity to check out the latest styles and trends. The average age of those featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18 years old. Most of the clothes they wear are a combination of high fashion—Vivienne Westwood is a keen favorite—and homemade ensembles which when combined together create a novel if not hysterical combination. The photographs' simplicity of straight-on full body shots only accentuates the funky and ornate outfits themselves. This latest publication of the best of Fruits will follow the original Phaidon publication in including translations of the various Japanese captions originally attached to the photographs—listing the name, age and clothing of each person photographed.