The premise of Happy Victims is still oddly subversive: a fashion magazine that actually engaged with the people who, very literally, bought into the universe and the publicity of the brands they worshipped. It’s not fashion as we’re usually asked to consume it, where ‘beautiful models live beautiful lives wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful homes’. Here we see a Buddhist monk with a Comme des Garçons shopping habit and an Alexander McQueen collector listening to neighbours through paper-thin walls, among others. Photographed at home in Tokyo, with their collections before them, these anonymous disciples joyously detail the ritual and the sacrifice of their brand-name obsessions. Kyoichi’s anti-heroes exist in parallel to the fashion universe of fame, fantasy, and glamour.
While the cover and belly band have been completely reworked, the book’s interior maintains a simple, documental format: one happy victim per spread, Kyoichi’s photos supplemented by a short commentary on the individual and his or her daily schedule. Not typically members of the leisure class, the goths, Lolitas, and stringent Margiela fans must also go to work and find time to care for their clothes. Underlying this sense of relatability is the equal sense that Happy Victims would be hard to reproduce today, when ‘storytelling is manufactured and marketed for the masses’ on social media, and the fashion industry itself has become ‘an infinitely fragmented, diffuse cultural phenomenon’, having lost ground to both fast fashion and street-level trends.
Kyoichi is by turns tender and teasing with his happy victims, rejecting all received wisdom that puts them at the bottom of a mythical hierarchy of collecting and celebrates more ‘respected’ collectors of books, art, or music. They’re ‘magic’ to his eyes. And anyway, Isabella concludes, ‘In 2025, aren’t we all happy victims?’
Published by Apartamento. Hardback.
