On March 3, 1970, when "Anne/ELLE Japon" was first published, a male student hoping to enter an art school handed me a copy and asked, "Did you know about this magazine?" This was my first encounter with fashion magazines.

At the time, America was the dominant overseas focus. Girls were convinced that the world was fashionable, and that the world was dominated by movies like "American Graffiti," depicting a night at an American high school. This graphic, saddle-stitched, A4-sized magazine with a European flair was a shock. Was a brown bag with a mixed alphabet print fashionable in a world I didn't know? I didn't really understand, but I was convinced that this was what fashion was.

In 1969, then-president Kinosuke Iwahori of Heibonsha (now Magazine House) accompanied Managing Director Tatsuo Shimizu to Paris and signed a partnership agreement with the French women's weekly magazine "ELLE." This was the start of a licensed magazine that played a key role in establishing fashion in Japan. However, "AnAn/ELLE Japon" was an unconventional fashion magazine that mixed pages from its Japanese editor with pages from its affiliated magazine, ELLE, and continued this style until it became independent from "AnAn" and was launched under the same company as "ELLE Japon" in 1982.

"AnAn/ELLE Japon" was launched with Shibasaki Aya as editor-in-chief and Horiuchi Seiichi as art director. The cover of the first issue featured a foreign model with blonde hair and a bonnet, photographed by Tachiki Yoshihiro. In the fashion pages edited for Japan, Tachikawa Yuri served as the model and main character, wearing clothes specially designed by Kaneko Isao. Nagasawa Setsu provided commentary on the latest Paris Fashion Week information, and an essay by Mishima Yukio was also published, with articles from the French edition of "ELLE" running 16 pages per fold. Unlike fashion magazines that included sewing patterns and instructions at the back of the magazine, 'AnAn/ELLE Japon' was the first magazine to suggest how to coordinate the latest fashions, something that is now commonplace, says stylist Yumiko Hara. Hara began her career preparing for the launch of 'AnAn/ELLE Japon' by translating articles from the French edition of ELLE and putting them into 16 pages. She continued this work until she became a freelance stylist. The Paris fashion world gave way to haute couture, and ready-to-wear began to drive trends. The era of buying ready-made clothes instead of making them was over. The launch of 'AnAn/ELLE Japon' without patterns was the result of the editor's keen sense of style. "When we first launched, the fashion pages featured one-of-a-kind garments made by Isao Kaneko, so there were no prices listed. It wasn't until issue 50 that we started borrowing samples from manufacturers and brands and crediting prices, as we do today," Hara says. In 1973, when the Syndique (Haute Couture Union) was reorganized and the Ready-to-Wear Union was established, Hara got to cover Paris Fashion Week for the first time. "Kenzo held their shows at the stock exchange, Sonia Rykiel at a boutique on Rue de Grenelle, and they held their shows in various locations. Before Kenzo, the show format was for models to hold number cards and walk solemnly, but Kenzo sent many models down the runway at once, making it like a festival. This format was carried over to Jean Paul Gaultier." At that time, collections were covered by reporters from Bunka Publishing and newspapers with Paris bureaus, and very few people traveled from Japan; instead, it was more buyers who were in the mix. Hara Yumiko was given a seat with the French ELLE team, with an ELLE Japon Yumiko Hara card attached to the seat. "I would find the editor-in-chief of the French magazine ELLE or the fashion editor in charge of a particular page that caught my eye, and it was fascinating to see that this person was creating that page," he says.

It was a relaxed era for fashion photography, when ELLE would send me all the remaining positives used by the magazine and I could use them however I wanted. While it's hard to imagine from the fetishistic photography of Helmut Newton, there was a time when he also shot fashion for ELLE, and the resulting photos certainly have an ELLE feel. In the January 5, 1972 issue of ELLE, a major feature featured photos by Helmut Newton and Gilles Bensimon (former creative director of ELLE International) in a bold design with four or six shots per page. This was the work of art director Seiichi Horiuchi. Akagi Yoichi, who was an editor at Heibonsha Publishing at the time, wrote in his book that editors of France's ELLE magazine were eager to see ANNAN/ELLE JAPON, and as they opened the pages, their eyes became serious, likely because they were captivated by the innovative art direction.

It is surprising that Japan's first charming fashion magazine for women was staffed almost entirely by men, both in terms of editing and design. Perhaps, like Ki no Tsurayuki, author of Tosa Nikki, they felt, "Just as men write diaries, so women write them too."

References
* "Paris Collection" by Akiko Fukai (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho)
* "AnAn" 1970 by Yoichi Akagi (Heibonsha Shinsho)
* "The Work of Yumiko Hara 1970→" by Yumiko Hara (Bookmansha)

(Continued on 4/12)