BEST OF TOKYO WITH EDISON CHEN/WELCOME TO MY SUBSTACK
THE STREETWEAR LEGEND'S TOKYO PICKS!!!
I can’t claim to be a sneakerhead or a massive streetwear aficionado, but I’ve always been impressed with Edison Chen. He’s mainstream famous; he had a stint as a Hong Kong film star and musical artist in the 2000s but left it all behind to pursue streetwear and sneakers with his brand Clot.
He had one of Nike’s biggest ever collaboration success stories with the Air Max Kiss Of Death, he now has a deal with Adidas, he’s married to a Chinese supermodel, he’s good looking, moves cool, and he’s the kind of guy that I’ve wikipedia’d many a time over the last 15 years.
I saw he was coming to New York for an Adidas Stan Smith collaboration release last month, so I did what I do whenever I need access to someone from the Asian market: Hopped on Whatsapp and messaged my friend Fed Tan.
I met Fed Tan through Rocky Xu (another insanely connected guy) in Paris last year, did a Best of Hong Kong video with him, and since then he has been my secret weapon for China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. He knows everybody. I’m not 100% sure what his exact job title is but he seems to be one of those cultural liason connectors who is friends with and does business with everybody.
The conversation went like this:
A few days later I met up with Edison and a couple of Adidas and PR Consulting publicists outside Sant Ambroeus on Lafayette and knocked out two videos in quick succession; an origin story, and a Best of Tokyo. I had originally asked for a Best of Hong Kong, but he has been living between LA and Tokyo for the past few years, and I always love a Tokyo video, so we settled on that.
In person, he was pretty much what I’d expect – cool, confident, energetic, quick to laugh, no-nonsense and ready to record the moment we met. The interaction lasted all of nine minutes, and I was very happy with the results (the origin story video currently has 1.3 million views on Instagram).
I’ve been toying with the idea of a Substack for a while now because it makes a lot of sense for me to make these lists into clickable Google maps links, and after procrastinating for weeks I sat down this morning and decided to just get it done.
So, welcome to my Substack, this is Edison Chen’s list of spots to visit in Tokyo with a clickable Google Maps link, and the the video is linked at the very bottom. And that is all I have to say about that.
EDISON CHEN’S TOKYO PICKS:
Neighborhood: Nakameguro.
Coffee Shop: HIMA COFFEE&KAKIGORI.
Restaurants: Sukiyaki-Botan, Nogizaka Yui.
Ramen: Afuri.
Date Spot: Nakameguro river, teamLab, Olive Spa Penthouse.
Bar: Gen Yamamoto.
Clothing Store: ARTS&SCIENCE, ESTNATION (Roppongi Hills), Various Artists (V.A.).
SO, I LIKE EDISON CHEN, I LIKE TOKYO AND I LIKE YOU!
