L.L.Bean's Japan-Only Clothing Line Was Too Good to Stay Japan-Only
It may be one of the Great American Clothing brands, right up there with fellow centenarians like Levi's and Abercrombie & Fitch, but L.L.Bean isn't really "fashion." And proudly so! Still operating out of Freeport, Maine, for the past 110 years, L.L.Bean does clothes, sure. It does gear, yes. But its outdoorsy customers aren't coming to L.L.Bean for "fashion."
Why? Well, simply: Fashion is trend. Fashion is fleeting. Clothes? Style? That's forever. They don't call it timelessness for nothing.
But that's also a very Ameri-centric view. Because there are plenty of people who actually consider the modest maker of Bean Boots and Boat 'n Tote bags to be extremely fashionable, the perfect balance of ageless craft and modern taste.
It's just that those people don't live in L.L.Bean's home country.
L.L.Bean has been a cornerstone of Japanese fashion since the '70s, when choosy Japanese shoppers pedestaled OG American makers like L.L.Bean as loftily as any luxury label, partially because they were both equally hard to come by.
Even now, L.L.Bean remains huge in Japan, where it sells collections specially created for the domestic market. The L.L.Bean Japan Collection is one of such line.
It is, believe it or not, L.L.Bean as quintessential Japanese streetwear, some of the most obviously fashion-meets-style stuff this side of The North Face Purple Label. Also like The North Face Purple Label, L.L.Bean Japan Collection was initially exclusive to Japan (hence the name).
Unlike The North Face Purple Label, L.L.Bean Japan Collection is too good to stay in Japan forever.
"There's been this pent up demand in the US for quite a while," says Amanda Hannah, L.L.Bean's head of brand engagement and external communications. "We know we have fans out there who have been really interested in what we're doing in Japan, and we haven't offered it up to them."
That all changes on April 11, when L.L.Bean hits 96 North 5th Street in Brooklyn and 8406 Melrose Ave in Los Angeles for weekend-long pop-ups offering nearly two-dozen pieces from the most recent L.L.Bean Japan Collection.
"What the team in Japan has done in terms of interpreting the brand, staying true to our heritage but modernizing it in a way that's still classic and timeless, and is also minimalist in nature and focused on the outdoors — it's so spot on," says Charlie Bruder, L.L.Bean's vice president/general manager of international & wholesale. "What they've done here is really met the moment in terms of where style is in Japan."
Because, yes, L.L. Bean Japan Collection is very Japanese streetwear, but it's also stylistically faithful to the house that Bean built. Think Digawel, think unused, think bucket hats and generously cut denim jeans and and terrifically '90s takes — read: oversized and fresh-hued — on signature pieces like the L.L.Bean field coat and anorak.
"It is so LL Bean and it is so not L.L. Bean at the same time," says Hannah.
The L.L.Bean Japan Collection's '90s cues come in part from the origins of the Freeport-to-Tokyo connection. In 1992, after a couple seasons spent bemusedly observing Japanese fans' pilgrimage to their Maine flagship, L.L.Bean execs jetted off to Japan to establish their first store outside of the state where Bean was born.
But even after 33 years, even with its own L.L.Bean lines, Japan still can't get enough of the classics.
You thought demand for L.L.Bean's eternal Boat 'n Tote, still the "number one driver of new" customers according to Hannah, only spiked after last year's Trader Joe's bag trend? Hardly.
"The tote boom that we're experiencing here happened in Japan about 10 years ago," says Hannah. "We couldn't keep up with demand. We were shipping containers over there as fast as we could."
