青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Threads of Beauty presents the works of a photographer who embarked from the glittering front lines of fashion on a quest to document traditional attire in today’s world—attire she calls “the ultimate in haute couture.”

Yuriko Takagi trained in graphic and fashion design before establishing herself as a fashion designer in Europe. In 1995, she set out to photograph people who lived their daily lives clad in traditional garb, traveling across thirteen countries over three decades in search of people whose countenances were, in her words, in unison with their clothing. This collection distills the best of the more than 1,000 images she accumulated in those years.

Takagi sees in her subjects the root essence of attire; clothes, she says, are at once “identity,” possessions, and “a source of joy.” Globalization has done much to flatten fashion in the years since she began her project, but the ties between clothes and their wearers that she finds so captivating—and that she so radiantly captures in her photographs—remain as resilient and as integral to human life as ever.

Tokyo native Yuriko Takagi studied graphic design at Musashino Art University and fashion design at Trent Polytechnic (present-day Nottingham Trent University). Today she is active as a photographer who brings her distinctive perspective to bear on works that capture the presence of people as manifested in their bodies and clothing. An interest in the wonders of natural phenomena has also inspired her to experiment with new artistic approaches in recent projects such as the chaoscosmos series. Publications include Dior by Yuriko Takagi (Rizzoli, 2025); her works are housed in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and Hara Museum ARC, among other institutions.