In the age where any image imaginable is instantly accessible at any given moment, the people at Lightning Clutch are taking a step back out of the fast lane to deliver quality fashion and lifestyle curation through their ranges of magazines and books.
For the unaware, Lightning Clutch is a Japanese publication company specialising in vintage clothing, lifestyle, outdoor activity, and sports to name a few. However, the most important aspect linking all these seemingly separated topics together under the Lightning Clutch banner is the brand's ethos of highlighting a way of life that exists seemingly outside the world of social media and fast fashion. One of my favourite publication lines which really demonstrates this brand ethos is the Lightning Archive range which aims to catalogue and extensively detail vintage clothing of a specific kind. These niches often encompass items spanning the whole of the 20th century allowing the reader to chart the changes in styles, introductions of new techniques, and subtle differences between brands of that era. I have recently been leafing through the Vintage Denim edition, noticing the changes in style between the decades, seeing what specific design choices are present in modern denim and which have been lost to the history books. Because of this specific, manual-like level of detail and care taken by the team at Lightning Clutch in categorising and charting specific vintage pieces, the books take on an industrial feel. You can imagine head designers at Lee, Levi's, or Champion all having a copy of the relevant guide near to hand.
The specific layout of the manuals is where the functionality of the books comes in. In most cases, each A4 sized page contains a large colour image of a specific item along with two smaller images of the back of the item as well as an image of a specific detail, often an interesting design choice or the label. Accompanying the graphics is a set of details regarding the piece including the type of item (denim pant, for example) the decade the item is from, and the current owner of the item. Lastly, each item comes with a brief description, alas it is a description I am unable to read as the information in Lightning Archives is exclusively in Japanese, bar headings and numbers. However, due to the main selling factor of the books being the extensive level of care taken during the curation and photography process, this shortcoming serves little to no inconvenience to the reader (or looker, I suppose). In a sense, it provides a universality to the books as they can be readily accessed by anyone around the globe with an interest in vintage, and the publication know this. Lightning Archives, along with other magazines in the Lightning range such as 2nd or Clutch, have many stockists in the United Kingdom ranging from RareMags in Stockport to their own vintage inspired menswear store Clutch Cafe in London.
Despite the brand's global reach, they are yet to enter the mainstream of the vintage clothing scene. The vintage pieces showcased in their publications may prove too extreme to some audiences, with many pieces often having real wear and tear making the pieces really show their age. Another reason could be the formatting of the books, with expensive coffee table books possibly proving too analogue and outdated for many more casual vintage enthusiasts. On the other hand, you could argue that the attention to detail and obvious care and effort that goes into curating each of the Lightning Archives collections shows a reverence for vintage seldom seen in most high-street vintage shops. The enthusiasm embedded in each page is palpable, and it is an enthusiasm that transfers with ease to the reader but, moreover, the ethos of preservation and reverence that Lightning swears by is also imprinted onto onlookers.
Now, I am not suggesting that reading a Japanese denim catalogue will change your whole perception on vintage clothing and, by extension, sustainability as a whole because it won’t. What it will do is activate a dormant spirit within the individual, a spirit with a desire to slow down. The spirit wants to release itself from the thraldom of the mobile phone; it wants to take the time needed to ponder and gesticulate, to appreciate oft overlooked details. This spirit is what binds the books of Lightning Archives and imbues them with a sense of purpose. For it is a purposeful decision to have these manuals, unlike the alternative of browsing the internet for similar pictures or posters. The books are not especially inexpensive nor are they small. They take up physical space within your living area, acting as a decoration that signifies to visitors that you have an active interest in the topic of vintage clothing. This purposefulness that Lightning Archives represents is one that ought to be applied to all of vintage clothing, acting towards the reader gaining a mindset for responsibility and sustainability towards how they shop for clothing. The sweatshirts coming out of thoughtless fast-fashion labels today will refuse to stand the test of time and thus will not garner similar levels of reverence as those items appreciated within the pages of the books.
This degree of deep appreciation towards practical items is a deep-rooted ideal in Japanese culture, with zen Buddhism suggesting concepts such as wabi-sabi (the appreciation of imperfect items specifically stemming from their imperfect nature). Furthermore, the technique of sashiko mending (embroidered patterns being sewn into garments for both functional and decorative purpose) further ties the concepts of traditional zen appreciation to clothing. These concepts are seen prominently in Japanese philosopher and essayist Soetsu Yanagi's collection of essays The Beauty of Everyday Things (2017). In his 1926 essay titled The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things, Yanagi highlights how an appreciation of tools designed exclusively for function adopt a kind of beauty by default, a beauty that is defined by the tool's functionality: "The world of utility and the world of beauty are not separate realms. Who is to say that spirit and matter are not one?" (p.35).
Take what Yanagi suggests about utility and apply it to the world of Lightning Archives and vintage as a whole. The pieces depicted in the various volumes all have the theme of originally being exclusively functional items. Denim jackets, Danner Boots, sweatshirts, carpenters' trousers. Now, take popular vintage items today and examine them through the same lens. Brands such as Carhartt, Dickies, Levi's, Nike, and Adidas frequent the top of the vintage buyer's pile. All of these brands started as brands with a specific function, be it sporting equipment, workwear, or military purposes. To re-examine vintage clothing with the insight of eastern Buddhist ideology, an ideology that provides the basis for the appreciation seen in Lightning’s book series, is to learn to look at otherwise overlooked elements and smile. It is to smile when seeing how paint has fallen on a pair of carpenters' trousers. It is to smile at the way a pocket is uniquely shaped and patterned. It is to smile at the thought of the previous lives the garment you are now buying may have had.
Lightning Clutch's publications are at the heart of this simultaneously revolutionary and ancient way of viewing the world of material possessions. The combination of detail, love, care, and true appreciation poured into a physical catalogue allow the Lightning publications to enact conscious thought about our own fashion consumption as well as enabling readers to slow down, reengage, and appreciate what they wear daily. The level of dedication from the Lighting team is so rare you could say it's more common for lightning to strike twice.
Bibliography
Yanagi, S. (2017). The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Books.
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