User:Theobrad/sandbox/wdm

William David Marx, known professionally as W. David Marx, is an American fashion and culture writer who works and lives in Tokyo, Japan. He is best know for his first book Ametora: How Japan saved American style, which was published 2015 to wide acclaim from the fashion industry, an appreciation which has only continued to grow over time and leading to him becoming one of the "leading writers in Japanese menswear.  He later published Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change in 2022. Marx also publishes a newsletter titled Culture: An Owner's Manual. Before writing became a larger part of his work-life, Marx worked at Google as part of the Asia-Pacific Team on in Corporate and Product Communication.

Early life
Marx was born in Oklahoma to a Jewish father before moving to Oxford, Mississippi, then settling in Pensacola, Florida. His parents met at Vanderbilt University before his father became an academic.

Marx grew up in a tradition, academic, upper-middle class home. In this environment, he grew up wearing what can be described as "American heritage clothing" including brands like Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren, and a uniform consisting of navy blazers, Oxford shirts, and khakis.

As Marx became a teenager, he started findings his own style, becoming interested in alternative music and culture outside of Pensacola, and therefore moved away from preppy clothing to clothing that better represented his interests. This interest became significant during his early visits to Japan.

Education and moving to Japan
After visiting Japan in late high school through an International Baccalaureate program, Marx decided to study Japanese in college, and enrolled in B.A. in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. At Harvard he became a member of the Harvard Lampoon.

Whilst at college, he was accepted on an internship program at the publisher Kodansha in Tokyo during his summer break in 1998. Due to his interest in pop culture, he was placed in a manga magazine office, before moving to a fashion magazine called Hotdog Press. Through this experience, Marx discovered the growing 90s Japanese streetwear scene. In particular, Marx discovered the brand A Bathing Ape. This was during an era when the streetwear scene in the US was limited only to cities like New York, where brands such as Supreme were still in their infancy and long before they experienced young people lining up for hours to buy their products.

After being turned away when first attempting to buy a product from the A Bathing Ape Store, Marx returned the next day to discover over 100 people lining-up in August heat waiting to also buy an item from the brand. The whole process total three hours for Marx to finally get his hands on a t-shirt for the equivalent of $40 at the time. Later, Marx discovered that resellers were selling previous years' A Bathing Ape items for over three times the retail price. In reflecting on this event, Marx describes it as "very literally changed the direction of my life. I spent the next decade just obsessed with all the factors that would make this possible: that kids would line up like that and fork over so much money, the reseller economy, the degree the media was directing trends, etc."

On returning to Harvard, Marx explained his experience to his professors who encouraged him to study this phenomena and write his senior thesis on the subject. Marx, reflecting on his, views writing thesis as starting his career in professional fashion journalism and writing. Marx's thesis discussed the "specific marketing techniques of those street fashion brands, such as limited edition goods and hidden stores, which at the time seemed counterintuitive but now are very commonly used by brands like Supreme."

In his junior year at 20 years old, Marx and one of his friends created the first unofficial webpage for A Bathing Ape, which resulted in him being interviewed by the New York Times in an article titled "Scarcity makes the heart grow fonder" about the growing desire for rare fashion items across the globe and the prevalence of online communities searching for them.

After graduating from Harvard, Marx attended graduate school at Keio University where he studied his Master's degree in Business, specialising in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour.

Ametora: How Japan saved American style
As Marx's interest in fashion continued, the rise of modern brands in the early 2000s producing traditional menswear such as Beams Plus and Thom Browne helped Marx rediscover his appreciation for the clothes he was brought-up wearing.

In 2010, Take Ivy, a seminal book of Japanese menswear photography that depicts the attire of Ivy League students from the 1960s was published in English for the first time. After the book sold successfully in the English speaking market, Marx spoke with editor and decided to write the history of Japan's obsession with this collegiate style of American menswear and its development up until modern streetwear.

Ametora: How Japan saved American style was originally published in English. Marx believed the story would already be well-known by the Japanese fashion community. However, after the book began gaining traction in Japan, it was serialised in the Japanese fashion magazine Popeye. The book is now on its eight printing in Japan, although the number one market for the book is China, where it has sold 30,000 copies. The book is retitled Harajuku Cowboy for a Chinese audience, utilising the literal translation of "jeans" in traditional Chinese which is "cowboy-pants."

Through Marx's rising profile within both American and Japanese fashion landscapes, Marx was asked to join the Board of Directors as Outside Director for Nigo's follow-up brand to A Bathing Ape, Human Made.

Status and Culture
Marx's inspiration to write his second book came from the realisation that there wasn't "a single book that explains the Grand Mystery of Culture." With a prior interest in cultural trends, Marx quickly arrived at the central thesis of the book: "We cannot unravel the mystery of “how culture changes over time without understanding status." In its final form, the book investigates "how our cultural tastes, demeanour, speech habits, and fashion choices transmit information to others about who we are and our social status."

Personal life
Marx has lived in Tokyo for the best part of two decades. He lives in the suburbs of Tokyo.