Kyoichi Tsuzuki (1956), a Tokyo-born photographer and publisher, presents through his editorial project Happy Victims an ironic yet provocative exploration of a less conventional side of the fashion industry and, more broadly, of human nature. The photographs featured in the book portray an eclectic range of individuals—homemakers, workers, and even a Buddhist monk—together with their treasured collections. Photographed inside their own homes, these subjects display the entirety of their collections devoted to a specific high-fashion brand.
On each spread there is a photograph by Kyoichi with a caption describing the protagonist, their collection, and personal elements of their everyday life. The title of the book—and of the project—plays on lexical associations: it portrays people who, over the years, have sought out and purchased designer pieces, transforming them into an actual collection, thus becoming “victims” of marketing and the fashion industry. They are, in effect, faithful embodiments of the “fashion victim”—a notion theorized, not by chance, by a fashion designer to denote an uncritical and impersonal adherence to brand marketing strategies. The victims portrayed by Kyoichi are, in a sense, emancipated precisely because they are aware; it is this awareness that makes them “happy.” Their loyalty tips into obsession, yet through the meticulousness of collecting it becomes an expression of personality and individuality.
The book brings together Kyoichi’s Happy Victim photo reportages, published between 1999 and 2006 in Ryuko Tsushin, a monthly fashion magazine in which the artist documented the lives of these extraordinary enthusiasts in their domestic environments, surrounded by their “treasures.” Most of them do not belong to particularly affluent social classes, a detail that only heightens the symbolic significance and emotional intensity embedded in their obsession.
In the photograph dedicated to Thierry Mugler, the protagonist poses in a room of his home entirely adorned with Mugler shirts and suits. He is an advertising professional whose boss once told him that clothing would be his battle gear —an assertion that sparked his numerous purchases tied to the brand. From then on, he began using fashion as a communication tool, dressing according to the theme of the advertising campaigns he worked on.
When Mugler eventually withdrew from the Japanese market, the man managed to make substantial purchases during one of the final clearance sales, completing his impressive and vibrantly colored collection. He himself states that if he had the financial means, he would open his own Mugler boutique in Japan.
In this photograph, as in the others featured in the book, irony underpins Kyoichi’s artistic approach—an irony that nevertheless carries a clear and profound reflection on consumerism, identity, and the human need for belonging. Happy Victims thus becomes an honest and disarming portrait of a generation that defines itself partly through what it owns, finding in brands and garments not only objects of desire but true extensions of the self.
Cover image
Thierry Mugler, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, 2003.
From the book
Happy Victims, Kyoichi Tsuzuki
Published by Apartamento Publishing S.L., 2025
300 x 230 mm
184 pages
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-84-09-73269-2
17/12/25
