GREATEST: Haruka Hirata

My older brother and sister educated me—especially my older brother. He started showing me David Lynch, [Charlie] Chaplin, [Alfred] Hitchcock when I was around 10. That definitely dragged me to darker senses. My music influence also came from him—he was a record collector. Art-wise, my parents took me to every museum wherever we visited. We traveled a lot. But living in Thessaloniki, there were ruins everywhere and studying Greek mythology was mandatory, so those Greek references are my art influence. I don’t remember how I got into fashion— maybe TLC? Another significant influence was my mom’s words: ‘Why are you trying to be the same person as others?’ 

I wasn’t really aware of the underground scene until I started working at Escalator Records during my university days. Naka’s selection completely changed my music taste. Also, the energy that the underground bands embrace fits me so well. Being underground is to have a conversation with your inner self, facing loneliness. 

I don’t like listening to music. I’m having it enough at my store. It’s super interrupting—you can’t talk to your brain. Traveling is a good opportunity to confront yourself. 

I don’t really like going to concerts. Feist once played in Tokyo. It was not a very big crowd, so I could feel her energy very closely, like a wave. It was really touching. 

My music mentors are Naka and Maru, a Big Love buyer. I take a look at the wall and read their captions. Also, through conversation with friends. Other than that, I listen to my friends’ playlists on NTS or Spotify. 

He’s been running a record label called Teenage Teardrops and I contacted him that we wanted to stock some [records] for Big Love. It was 2009. Who can tell the gender from a foreign name? And I also didn’t have Instagram, so he thought I was a boy until our mutual friend visited him in L.A in 2011. 

It was already Cali’s signature. We just loved that font and thought it would be a great fit to our identity. 

We have new stuff at the store every single day. I write descriptions of the new drops, but it’s getting harder to track what’s coming tomorrow because it’s so random. Also, I find a lot of brands starting to launch their new collections without titles or themes, so you really need to go through their Instagram and find the inspiration source of the new collection. I appreciate the narratives behind the clothes, so I hope the brands describe more about their creation with words—but even the kids don’t care about it anymore. 

My influence on fashion is music, it’s my inspiration. Although if I can, I want to wear cosplay every day. I do have a theme every day—yesterday was an American teenager, the other day was an unsuccessful painter. But I’m not a good dresser because I’m not trying to express myself through clothes. 

Hiroshi Teshigahara, who was the second Iemoto (master of school), was an avant-garde movie director. I think movie lovers would know Woman in the Dunes or The Face of Another. I was into those—the aesthetics, the darkness, the delicate and sensitive expression. My mom is a flower lover, and she always told me the names of flowers. Our house even has a white birch and a camellia in our tiny garden. Living with nature, having four seasons, being close to the trees, plants and flowers are embedded in our culture. I used to express myself through poetry and zines, but I had been looking for a medium I could really throw myself into. Then, I was looking at Teshigahara’s Wikipedia and found out about his other face, and started working on ikebana. 

I love the entire process. Starting from greeting the teachers and classmates, setting up the table, choosing the flowers, picking the vase, then doing the ikebana, cleaning up the table and finishing with greeting the teachers and classmates again. 

There are flowers and vases at the classroom, but when I do it myself I have several favorite flower shops. I buy vases from my school, or I find from random thrift shops. When I do the ikebana, sometimes flowers come first, or vice versa.