Hankyu Men's Tokyo marks 15 years with a MINI x Paul Smith anniversary fair
Hankyu Men's Tokyo is marking 15 years with a month of programming that has almost nothing to do with clothing on its own -- a MINI x Paul Smith car display, a running-shoe fair and a small-press bookstore -- a standalone menswear department store's answer to not having Hankyu Umeda's scale to fall back on.
Hankyu Men's Tokyo, the standalone menswear department store near Ginza and Yurakucho, is running a month-long "15th Anniversary Fair" from October 14 to November 17 to mark 15 years since it opened, according to a release from operator Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores.
The anniversary programme spans a MINI x Paul Smith Edition car display on the first-floor Main Base, with a special showing at the Yurakucho Marion concourse on October 24-25 and a tie-in drink at the basement cafe Bcerin; a fifth-floor Shoes Fair (October 14-27) pairing a G.H.Bass limited line and a Trading Post pop-up with running labels Satisfy, Saysky and Converse Running; and a pop-up for menswear brand Sublations (November 11-17), where purchases of ¥100,000 or more come with a free belt. Shoppers using the store's app or points card earn an extra 2% in bonus points through the fair, on top of the usual 3%, and buying outerwear enters them into a prize draw.
The store is also opening a second branch, on its seventh floor, of Tomei Shoten by freee (透明書店), a small-press bookstore that has run in Tokyo's Kuramae district since 2023 and stocks zines and independent-publisher titles; the Hankyu branch adds an AI "recommendation" character and a system for browsing books by hint alone, rather than cover or title.
Limited anniversary items span from a ¥3,300 pair of briefs to a ¥257,400 reissued John Lobb City shoe and a ¥286,000 necklace, the release said, alongside a ¥18,700 perfume and a ¥203,500 pair of Crockett & Jones shoes.
A standalone menswear department store doesn't have Hankyu Umeda's scale to fall back on, so fifteen years in, it leans on variety instead: a car-brand collaboration to pull in passers-by at Yurakucho, a running-shoe fair, a prize draw, and now a bookstore that has nothing to do with clothing at all. Folding a small-press bookshop into a department-store floor is a bet that menswear shoppers will stay longer, and come back more often, for something that isn't menswear.