In the far-flung future, when our descendants look back at us, no doubt they will be amused if not confused by our era’s love of the selfie. “What was it about the early 21st century,” they will wonder, “that pushed people so constantly in front of their own cameras?”
Moreover, specifically regarding fashion selfies, we assume that future history buffs will be puzzled by the sheer quantity of time we spend on social platforms, endlessly scrolling through images of each other standing in curated living rooms or picturesque neighborhoods, wearing outfits that will likely seem, through the long lens of time, quaintly old-fashioned.
So, here’s the question: Will these descendants dismiss our self-portraiture as detritus of a generation raised on reality TV and too-easy access to cameras? Or will they take the time to sift through the gazillions of images to find the ones that have artistic merit, that stand out for integrity of form and intent, that gleam like true jewels among bright stones?
If the latter comes to pass, Battenwear humbly proposes that future critics review the work of Yasunori Kobayakawa, aka the Japanese Dandy.
We first met Yasunori a year ago when a mutual friend invited him to our Tokyo showroom. We immediately hit it off—our conversation unearthed commonalities that made it easy to enjoy a long chat. Little did we know that the real treat was yet to come: after he asked permission to try on items from our new collection, a camera and tripod materialized out of thin air. That’s when we had the pleasure of meeting Yasunori’s alter ego, the Japanese Dandy.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that such a pinnacle in the field of fashion selfies would spring up from Japan of all places. It’s a country already well known for its mastery of global cultural phenomena, already well known for its painstaking precision and genius of creativity.
This doesn’t make it any less of a surprising delight to watch Yasunori bring such imagination, intellect, and poetry to the concept of a fashion selfie. His photographs, as one would expect from the genre in which he exists, feature highly specific fashion items, presented with flourish, as if on a silver platter, to his viewer.
But he also brings his attention to detail and his surgical vision to the natural world around him, capturing flora and fauna with the same finesse. It helps too that he has a sense of humor behind the scenes, managing to create a product with a serious level of quality without ever taking himself too seriously.
Which is why, in pursuit of trying to figure out what tickled us so much about Yasunori’s style and process, we asked him to spend an autumn afternoon with us, having the Dandy pose in some of our favorite items from Fall/Winter 2026.
We arrived with a bag full of clothing but beyond that, our involvement was mere spectatorship. Yasunori has an eye for location, choosing angles with the deliberation of a cinematographer. Once the shot is established, he sets up his phone on his tripod, counts out the camera timer in his head, and at the last possible second, assumes the Dandy pose.
What came next was a lot of tongue clicking and making fun of himself as he redid each shoot. We got the distinct impression, looking over his shoulder during the process, that we could see only about half of what he saw in each shot. After he tweaked the angle and his pose, he ultimately got to his final image, capturing that quality we find so appealing, even if we still don't exactly understand why.
Over the course of the afternoon we spent together, we walked through the park, working our way through the bag of jackets and pants. Then, all outfits shot, we sat down over coffee to discuss what motivated Yasunori to create his Japanese Dandy social media presence.
We spoke about his influences and passions, his desire to create more fullness in a life otherwise dictated by a desk job, and most of all the sense of purpose that photography gave him.
Yasunori explained that he first came into camerawork during the pandemic when he had time to really dive deeply into the hobby. He spent hours out in nature, seeking what would become his driving sense of composition, learning about light and depth and movement. Photography takes patience and persistence, and the unusual circumstances of quarantine allowed him both.
Around the same time, he explained, he lost a relative and at the funeral was struck by the power of the slideshow made to commemorate this family member's life. This was an “aha” moment, when he realized the importance of photos in encapsulating our lives and our perspectives.
Maybe this is why his photographs seem so meaningful to us. They capture not only moments in time but a feeling of heft and import. His photographs, of himself as the Dandy and of the world around him, show the vision of one who knows that time is fleeting and needs to be grabbed and arranged just so.
All of which is to say, when our grandchildren’s great-grandchildren look back and marvel at all the time we spent loving scrolling through fashion selfies , we hope they will discover Yasunori’s Japanese Dandy. (We also hope that Battenwear will be, by then, a multi-century clothing dynasty, and that these pictures have been collected into a photo book about our early years . . . but we digress)
What about you? If your future descendants were able to access your social media feed, which selfie-portraitist would you hope they would discover and learn their fashion history from? We hope you’ll get in touch with your thoughts (and if you want to send your own selfie in a TSP or Northfield Parka, we promise to submit it for the dynastic compendium of early Battenwear that will no doubt materialize next century).
All photographs are the property of Yasunori Kobayakawa and can be viewed on his instagram.