Mai Sakamoto
What is
“I like your style”?
In this series we ask fashion lovers to share some of their favourite outfits and talk us through what inspires and influences the way they dress and shop.
Each person featured then nominates someone they are inspired by and they then become the next featured in the series - creating a chain of style admiration across the globe.
Mai Sakamoto was nominated
Frederikke Graumann
Who is Mai?
Hi, I’m Mai Sakamoto. I am 27 years old, I’m born and raised in Tokyo suburb and moved to Denmark when I was 15.
While I am in Copenhagen at this very moment I have been moving around between here, Berlin and Tokyo in the recent years.
My practice in this world is love.
I just founded a design studio called Let’s not marry let’s cook with my homie. We work with art direction, graphic and spatial design with focus on love and food.
I feel very flattered to be nominated by Frederikke, I know her from when I studied fashion design here in Copenhagen.
Follow Mai at @melt_soon
Follow @letsnotmarryletscook
Your favourite Japanese designer?
and why
I don’t have a favourite at the moment.
Best Vintage Store in Berlin?
Hmm, I can’t think of the best store, but these red trousers are from Sing Blackbird in Neukölln. But actually my best buys are always in random places. Most often nothing fancy, like secondhand stores in Japan, warehouse in Kiev, charity shops on the countryside of Denmark.. Besides that I’m a big flea market goer no matter where I am.
Who most influences
and inspires your style?
People on the streets. I’m always observing how people dress and what that tells about them, what they want to communicate consciously and subconsciously. I’m fascinated by people whose way of dressing hints a story or has an edge - especially often when the gender norms are challenged I feel inspired.
In Tokyo I’m always impressed by how well people dress. It is by far the most fashionable city I know.
On a more fun note, I adore the street snap magazine “fruits” in the 90s which is full of fascinating characters and creatures. Whenever I have a look I’m reminded why fashion is so fun.
What do you love
about your style?
That it’s playful and sexy. I love sexy!
I also love that all my clothes are secondhand. I think it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that I’m an expert in secondhand hunting, from all the fun 1 euro stuff to my balenciaga blazer. It’s been years since I stopped buying new clothes, that’s part of my fashion activism. The fashion industry as we know it needs a serious revolution.
How do you think living between both the Japanese and Danish landscape, surroundings and culture feeds into your own aesthetic?
I know I am influenced by the Japanese aesthetics both in terms of the bombastic advertisement aesthetics overloaded with colors and infomations as well as the more traditional aspect of it - in how I appreciate harmony and balance. But perhaps because there is no one culture or city that I fully belong to I feel free. I am most often an alien anywhere I go and that enables me to take a bit here and bit there, then to mix up and transform and the result is my style.
Do you feel Covid/lockdown has affected the way you dress? If so how...if not, why not?
I was in Japan when covid-19 hit and I quarantined in my mom’s house for a month without having to dress up much. Then I came back to Scandinavia and for a couple of months I’ve been spending my time almost entirely on the countryside where I dressed more relaxed and fit for nature.
I came back to Copenhagen a week ago and now that I’m in a city there is a point in dressing up. Not that I dress for other people but it’s most fun to dress up when you do in a dynamic constellation of people that influence and inspire each other. And it’s great to feel hot when being surround by other hot people and fashionistas.
Personal style can be about how we want to present ourselves visually to the world - how do you intend for your clothes to present you?
I don’t want to look too serious, I think fashion is fun when you play with it. I love to mix up items that have diverse references in unexpected combinations.
And then there’s a rebel inside me, and if people do one certain thing I want to do in a different way. I never want to look like everyone else.
Here in Denmark people used to dress very neutral and toned-down, and to some extent my style has been a reaction to that though not entirely. I think I would always rebel in one way or another. Nonetheless, the prevalence of the Scandinavian minimalism in the local fashion in Copenhagen has definitely been changing in the recent years, I think more people dress more vibrant and daring compared to the time I moved here first which is fun to observe.
Your most embarrassing fashion moment to date:
That’s an irrelevant question because I have no shame.
Your most icon fashion moment to date:
A couple of summers ago I was in Berlin and my friend Leo wore this pair of trousers (in the picture) and myself a bathing suit in the matching print. And we went to Buttons (a cute monthly queer party). I remember people would keep coming over to us, I think I never got that many compliments from strangers on what I wear in my entire life. And they were my own designs. For the calligraphy print I both wrote the text and did the calligraphies, the text was my manifesto for life at that time - “dance! Music is the answer!” “if you have lots of love then share with the world” “let’s not marry let’s cook” and so on.
The best runway show that happened during your lifetime
That’s a big question. I can’t answer.
But if I may stick to the present time I found Balenciaga SS19 and GmbH SS20 outstanding. I also got super excited when I saw the the new New York based label Collina Strada’s SS20 show which happened at the farmer’s market in New York. I love her collab with the art director Charlie Engmann, it’s so fun and playful. I resonate with the ecosexual message behind the label and respect the effort in using deadstock and up-cycled materials .
Images — Maru Oxelman
