THE FOUNDING OF THE COMPANY AND ADMIRATION FOR THE AMERICAN LIFESTYLE

The story of Beams begins in February 1976, when founder Etsuzo Shitara opened a tiny, 21-square-meter imported clothing shop called American Life Shop Beams in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood. Shitara hoped the store would offer young people something completely new. The name “Beams” played on the store’s ambitions: casting light on quality products from around the world, supporting others as a solid structural unit, and leaving customers with “beaming smiles.”

Set up to resemble a UCLA dorm room, the shop sold all the items indispensable to the youth of the American West Coast, from athletic sweatshirts to mousetraps. Even in these early days, Beams never just sold clothing but offered a full variety of goods to better illustrate how people overseas were living in new ways.

Over the past few decades, Harajuku has become a global mecca of street fashion, initially attracting young people from throughout Japan and, now, tourists from abroad. But when Beams opened forty years ago, there were no famous shopping complexes or landmarks like Laforet Harajuku. The entire idea of “fashion” was limited to local versions of Ivy League clothing and a few artisanal designers who produced small lots out of their cramped apartments. Moreover, compared to womenswear or business suiting, the men’s casual market was especially underdeveloped.

The first Beams store—which sold imported goods from the West Coast—embodied the country’s aspirations toward living an authentic American lifestyle. The same year as the store’s opening, a new men’s fashion magazine, Popeye (Magazine House), appeared on newsstands, focused primarily on West Coast culture. Beams and Popeye worked together closely to exchange the latest information about foreign culture and merchandise, forging a strong relationship that lasts to this day.

A brown paper bag featuring the printed words in orange: "American Life Shop: BEAMS. Harajuku, Shibuya, 470-3947 462-0222."

In 1977 Beams opened a second store in Shibuya to sell more West Coast–inspired products. Two years later, Shitara and his team jumped on the bandwagon for Ivy League and “Trad” styles, launching a new kind of shop—Beams F. The “F” stood for “future,” charging the company with a new mandate to stock the most desirable foreign brands before anyone else. 

The store offered an impressive collection of East Coast American goods; later, Beams F went straight to an even more authentic source of traditional goods, the United Kingdom, to find merchandise better suited to its customers joining the workforce.

In these years, Beams established the archetypal way that Japanese specialty stores operated—with cultural antennae held high to the skies, constantly searching for the latest styles, fashion, and lifestyles.

Text: Kaname Murakami / WWD JAPAN, Editor-In-Chief W.DAVID MARX / Author of "Status and Culture" and "Ametora"