The Cult of Collecting
by Isabella Burley

To me, Happy Victims and the 85 photographs that make up Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s now legendary series unflinchingly capture people who have found themselves through fashion. Sometimes it’s awkward, funny, extreme, tender—and sometimes they blend into their obsession so deeply, they disappear. Suffocated by clothes. Either way, it’s their salvation. The photographs themselves rarely indulge in glamour, and the clothes don’t always look that good, often chaotically piled on floors and sofas or hanging clinically on rails. But it feels revolutionary, because Happy Victims not only spotlights a niche community in Japan; it opens up a wider commentary on fashion at large, on consumption, obsession, desire, and identity.

I’ve been selling copies of the original printing (with obi) at Climax Books, the concept bookstore I founded in London in 2020, since we launched. Its proportions feel unconventional, full-bleed landscape images to the right and descriptions to the left. None of the happy victims are named, only identified by their beloved brand. Increasingly harder to find, this version has become its own coveted collector’s item. A holy grail. The book that documents the cult of collecting fashion is now the cult thing—selling out immediately with each restock. I always ask our customers why they are drawn to it, and they often respond with, ‘Well, because I’m a fashion hoarder too’.

Happy Victims most prominently serves as a shrine to designers. The images feel spiritual, larger than life—even without the associated exclusivity often ascribed to luxury fashion. Many of the brands included in the series fall outside of the mainstream, as do so many designers that are worshipped by young people today. Think Martin Margiela, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, Christopher Nemeth, Helmut Lang, Number (N)ine, Anna Sui, Undercover, Zucca, and McQueen, to name a few whose pieces appear across the book, in photographs taken between 1999 and 2006.

Most designers build universes around their brands. They transport you and draw you in. The more radical the designer, the more extreme the world. Oh, and it’s not just the clothes; it’s the ephemera too: the creased Hermès shopping bags, copies of Comme des Garçons’ six, shoe boxes, fragrances, and even a pair of Yohji Yamamoto Y’s for Living curtains and an imaginary pregnancy kit make their way into the photographs. I still have a life-size red Comme des Garçons PLAY heart in my kitchen, taken from a Dover Street Market store display from 2008. I can’t part with it, and I’m typically not a hoarder.

A lot has changed since the images were taken. Not just in fashion, but across the world at large. Brands have become mega machines, designers are now celebrities, consumers are content-makers, showing off their hauls on TikTok. Storytelling is manufactured and marketed for the masses. I always wondered what would’ve happened if Tsuzuki had continued the series, but I don’t think he could make the images today in the same way. It might feel vulgar or excessive. Like showing off. The opposite of these works, which to me have always felt nuanced, displaying an admiration for fashion, not simply capitalism on steroids.

There is of course a historic fetishism to collecting; all collections are objects of desire. But collecting fashion is weird because it’s often not about the wearing, but the owning. The more extreme pieces require discipline, care, protection, storage, rail space. The boring stuff. In the book, the photographs are accompanied by a daily schedule for each happy victim. Their everyday lives are all fairly similar and mundane, juxtaposed with their sometimes wild collections. In that sense, collecting offers them a space to visit another world, explore themselves, and push the limits. Total escapism, whether the clothes are worn or not.

Fashion is a kind of fatal attraction. The happy victims’ addiction to collecting is often to their financial detriment. Tsuzuki began this series in 1999 a few years after the Japanese asset price bubble had burst. From the mid ‘80s to early ‘90s, Japan experienced rapid economic growth with asset prices soaring. At this time, the Japanese property market was four times more valuable than the whole of the US. When asset prices and stocks suddenly dropped in 1991, causing economic stagnation and household income decline, the fraught years leading to the new millennium and beyond would become known as the ‘Lost Decades’. These happy victims were consuming so much during a time when it could be seen as financially reckless to do so. Or, despite the tumultuous economy, they still saw the importance of investing in their collections. The housewife who collects Jean Paul Gaultier (think loud prints, sheer mesh tops, sexy silhouettes) says her husband tells her they could have built a house with the value of her collection.

There is a sense of exhibitionism in the images too—subjects are photographed in their most intimate and private spaces. Everything is exposed in their small homes, expansive collections packed into one room. The collectors, when their faces aren’t blurred out or turned away, are often unassuming (with the exception of the Thierry Mugler mega fan whose presence is felt in his spiderman tie and silver shades), proving you don’t know what happens behind closed doors. But we can imagine: Some happy victims smile too.

Tsuzuki, who at his core is a documentarian, explains the balancing of these extremes, encapsulated by the paradox of the book’s title: ‘My happy victims are neither strikingly attractive nor do they occupy handsomely appointed dwellings’. So much so that, at the time of release, many of the luxury brands featured in the series sent complaints to Tsuzuki, responding negatively. For them, the consumers didn’t match the lifestyle they were selling—they didn’t like the honest depiction of what these collectors looked like and how they were living. You can’t speak about Happy Victims without acknowledging this darker side of the fashion industry. The brands to which the book’s subjects have dedicated their wardrobes and bank balances don’t love them back. There is a feeling of the happy victims being swallowed up by the fashion they worship—a never-ending, lifelong pursuit of consuming. They’ve sacrificed living space, money, vacations for fashion. The photograph of the Y’s for Men happy victim always haunts me, lying on top of his collection as if in a coffin or buried six feet underground.

But you can’t stop now, right? Once you start collecting, it’s hard to quit. Sometimes I think it’s a small price to pay for a sense of belonging in a world that is more and more confusing. It’s exhausting deciding who to be each day. Isn’t it easier for someone to tell you? Or are they already telling us? In 2025, aren’t we all happy victims?