Murakami's Fashion Sense and the Role It Plays in His Work

Haruki Murakami is not exactly a fashion icon, but Murakami's fashion sense is more consistent and more interesting than many people realize. He loves classic American basics, he collects T-shirts with real devotion, and the clothes his characters wear often tell us who they are. Let's look at all three.

Brooks Brothers and the Ivy look

Our notes include a lovely piece of writing in praise of Brooks Brothers, the old American clothier. The appeal is easy to understand. It is a trustworthy brand, faithful to the basics, not a luxury label with a luxury price. Its virtue is moderation: plain but stylish. The writer recommends it especially to men in their thirties who suddenly realize they do not know how to dress like a grown-up.

The essay tells a charming story of a first visit to the Boston store, where an elegant older clerk with a gentle New England accent seemed more like a Harvard professor than a salesman. It also mentions that Miles Davis, according to his autobiography, wore little else but Brooks Brothers suits for a long stretch of his career. And the writer admits to buying six of the store's blazers. That is the sort of honest, slightly funny enthusiasm we associate with Murakami's essays. This is the preppy, Ivy League tradition he grew up admiring through American magazines and jazz records.

Clothes as character in the novels

Our notes suggest that Brooks Brothers even appears in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage as a small marker of the hero's taste. Tsukuru has no colour in his name, and he often feels empty, yet he is not entirely blank. He loves railway stations and has a neat, careful way of living. A well-chosen brand says something about him without a word of explanation.

This is a Murakami habit. He rarely spends pages describing fabric, but a single detail, a clean white shirt, a pair of jeans, a particular style of jacket, makes a character feel real. His narrators are usually plainly dressed, tidy and unshowy, which suits their position as ordinary men drifting into extraordinary events.

The T-shirt collector

The more playful side of his wardrobe is the T-shirt. Murakami wrote a series of essays for the magazine POPEYE about T-shirts he loves, later gathered in a book with photographs across eighteen chapters. We picked three of the anecdotes:

• The fox shirt. He bought it at a thrift shop in Honolulu, then learned about the viral song "What Does the Fox Say?" He was unimpressed by the song, and so he rarely wears the shirt.
• The Curious George shirt. He cannot remember where it came from. The monkey is cute, but he jokes that he lacks the courage to wear it in Tokyo's stylish Aoyama district, and might try it on a beach in the Bahamas instead.
• The sloth shirt. It features a drawing by the late illustrator Mizumaru Anzai, who labelled his subjects so you would know who they were. The label tells us the creature is a sloth.

We wrote about his collecting habit before in The Goodies Murakami Can't Toss Out, and the same spirit is here: a collector who treats small, cheap things with affection.

What it all adds up to

Put the pieces together and you get a style based on comfort, simplicity and a touch of humour. Nothing is loud, nothing is for show. That sensibility spills into his prose, which is also plain, precise and secretly stylish.

FAQ

What does Haruki Murakami usually wear?

Photographs often show him in simple, casual clothes: T-shirts, jeans and running gear.

Does Murakami like Brooks Brothers?

The essay in our notes praises the brand warmly, and we think it fits his taste for classic, unfussy American style.

Did Murakami write a book about T-shirts?

Yes, his POPEYE column on T-shirts was collected into a book.

What is your favourite everyday piece of clothing, and would it suit a Murakami narrator?