NEIGHBORHOOD

Excerpt From Type 7 Volume 5

“NEIGHBORHOOD started in 1994 in Harajuku, Tokyo. Initially I started with my three friends, connected by motorcycles. We had one shop which was very small and cheap to rent. In 30 years, too many things have happened to explain in a few short words, but I’ve been blessed with wonderful friends and staff and the business is steadily growing to this day”.

It’s thought of as a streetwear brand these days, though Shinsuke Takizawa has been at the head of NEIGHBORHOOD since long before a name was affixed to the genre. Like many of the big figures in his peer group, Takizawa takes his inspiration from a number of disparate sources, never shy to seek it out from somewhere else with each new idea. At its origins however, NEIGHBORHOOD was born out of a love of machines. In conversation with Takizawa, he elaborates a little further.

“The brand’s creations focus on making products inspired by my lifestyle. In addition to fashion, we’ve produced interior products, pet accessories, even gardening tools. New ideas come inevitably from everyday life. They’re not created by marketing and they have nothing to do with trends. Now I’ve become interested in the style of motorsport again.”

When he founded NEIGHBORHOOD, Takizawa never expected the brand to have the global reach it does today. Like many of the big names in streetwear, it was incubated in the 1990s, a twilight era for pre-internet fashion movements which were much more local than they ever could be today. Takizawa was a key figure in the Ura-Harajuku scene, named so for the back street district of Shibuya in which it took place. At first, those who knew about it outside of Japan were in a rarified club. By the time Tokyo streetwear was beginning to be “discovered” on a more international scale, Takizawa was perfectly placed to rise with it.