WHERE CLIQUES,
OLD AND NEW,
COME TOGETHER IN HARMONY
The Awesome Fashion of Nana Osaki Brought to Us by Ai Yazawa
by Hella Cliques
October 2, 2026
In the late 1970s British punk culture and specifically Vivianne Westwood designs swept through Tokyo's youth subcultures. The youth in districts like Harajuku embraced her subversive, bondage-heavy, and tartan-filled designs.
By the mid 1990s, Avant-garde Japanese fashion designers like Jun Takahashi and Rei Kawakubo along with street-style publications like Cutie magazine, further established Westwood and punk DIY aesthetics as central pillars of Japanese streetwear.
During this era, Ai Yazawa was attending fashion school and immersing herself in Tokyo street style, becoming a passionate enthusiast of Westwood's work. When NANA debuted in 2000, Yazawa dressed Nana Osaki, Ren, and Shin in real-world, iconic Westwood archive pieces—the Armour Ring, the Giant Orb Lighter necklace, Rocking Horse platform shoes, and tartan Anglomania blazers.
Authentic Vivienne Westwood
Before NANA, Westwood's line was predominantly an underground or high-fashion niche in East Asia. Yazawa brought those luxury-punk aesthetics to millions of mainstream manga readers who had never engaged with punk before.
The success of the NANA manga, anime, and live-action films triggered massive surges in sales for Vivienne Westwood accessories in Japan during the 2000s. This phenomenon repeated itself in the 2020s, as Gen-Z audiences discovered the series on social media and treated NANA as a primary fashion guide for Y2K and punk street style.
Vivienne Westwood brought punk to Japan's fashion vanguard in the 1980s, but Ai Yazawa gave it a beating emotional heart, turning Westwood's garments into timeless cultural armor for millions of fans around the world.
