Issue 5 of FRUiTS was published in late 1997, during the magazine’s earliest and most formative period. Conceived and edited by Shoichi Aoki, the issue continues the publication’s defining gesture: treating the streets of Harajuku as a living archive rather than a trend laboratory. The photographs document young people wearing clothes assembled from thrift stores, niche designers, handmade alterations, and personal improvisation. There is no seasonal logic or editorial directive. School uniforms are dismantled and re-layered, skirts sit over trousers, platforms exaggerate the body’s proportions, and garments are worn less as statements than as accumulated decisions made over time.
What sets Issue 5 apart is its increasing quietness. The layouts remain spare, the captions factual and minimal, offering names, ages, and occasional brand references without commentary. The images resist drama, positioning their subjects front-facing and self-possessed, as if participating in a neutral record rather than a performance. In doing so, the issue reflects a broader cultural moment in post-bubble Tokyo, where style emerged from constraint, reuse, and autonomy rather than abundance. Today, Issue 5 reads as an early archival document of fashion as lived practice—an argument, made without words, that meaning in dress is formed not by authority or instruction, but by the slow accumulation of personal choice.