To create you have to experience.
Create More Studios kicked off 2023 traveling to Tokyo in hopes of finding creative inspiration and collaborating with new, global communities of creatives. The Create More brand continues to bring together people that are continuously finding new ways to express themselves. Create More is beyond excited to bring that message overseas with Sam Snowden, Liam Allan, Austin Dodd (Doddy), & Christian Tiong-Smith on this trip.
Create More … just in Tokyo this time
I expected to fall in love and a be a bit overwhelmed by the Japanese culture, but what I was most surprised by was the infectious creative energy that surrounded me immediately in Tokyo. Whether it be Sam, Liam or Doddy reminding me that they are some of the most passionate and generally cool people that I know, or new Tokyo friends & creators sharing their passions and interests with me, I felt that everywhere I turned there was someone or something radiating creativity. It is impossible to not gravitate towards that energy.
It does feel a bit ironic writing about creative experiences on my corporate-issued ThinkPad while on the flight back to my 9-5, but as everyone else has perfectly captured Japan visually, I wanted this to be my attempt at expressing my Tokyo experience in words.
Living in a bubble can be a good thing?
Living in New York City you tend to see New York as the center of the world. Tokyo has been the only city to ever make me feel otherwise. The energy of Tokyo from the minute you get off the plane is fantastically overwhelming. The lights and hundreds of signs in your face, the toilets that talk to you, the anime characters everywhere, it is ordered chaos that somehow just makes sense. No one around you understands, let alone cares, about what you’re saying or doing. This makes you feel like you’re living in a little personal bubble in Tokyo. For the entire trip Sam, Doddy, Liam and I lived in this “bubble” together, chopping it up, making terrible inside jokes and bouncing new ideas off each other. You never quite know how traveling with friends will be, but after 15 days together as a group, it is safe to say that we were all meant to share these experiences and cross a few personal boundaries along the way.
The living room of our AirBnb quickly became known as “The Den”, or the space that you would find yourself having a coffee in first thing in the morning and crawling out of with a Sapporo at the end of the night. The Den created some of my favorite memories and incubated a level of creativity in all of us. In the den, Liam tapped everyone into the lowkey Japanese music scene. Blasting 多分風by Sakanaction, which quickly became the trip anthem.
He would randomly make 5 fire ass beats out of thin air and eventually even created one for a Create More TikTok. Doddy being the trip’s director of photography, was constantly going through previous days’ footage and pointing out crazy color combinations in pictures. Sam is the camera man, so of course he was locked into editing and outlining the creative direction of the upcoming mini-doc. Everyone’s distinct personalities and creative interests came out in the Den. There was an overarching appreciation of art, fashion, music, and culture in general that we all shared and brought to life in Tokyo. Everyone was so willing to dive into new experiences, be inspired and create something at the other end.
Law of Attraction
The group’s energy quickly became contagious as we walked around Tokyo as if we had lived there for years. The law of attraction states that the energy you put out into the world is the energy you get back, and this could not have been more true than on this trip. Our energy was reciprocated by a Tokyo based creative group called Cruel Palace. We set out to collaborate with likeminded individuals in Tokyo and this crew proved to be exactly that. Cruel Palace is a group of 16 creatives, all being models, DJs, rappers, artists, and fashion heads. They all seemed to be trying to carve out a space for themself in the Tokyo scene and they seemed to be doing that quiet well. Alas, the founder of Cruel Palace, describes the group as a collective of creative people who don’t resonate with the norm and are creating a community to push them each to new heights.
Our first meeting with them was for a photoshoot in Shibuya. This quickly turned into more of a kick back as we played arcade games and hopped around the city for hours. We seemed to immediately get along with each other and started exchanging creative inspirations and visions for the future. We initially met three Cruel Palace members: Cody, a neo-soul artist by the name of “Coldie” that splits time as an artist in Tokyo and as a student at Boston University, Shin, a full-time free-lance model who has shot with big brands like Gucci, H&M, and Adidas, and Akira, an up-and-coming model that recently shot with Zara yet also works a full-time corporate job. Liam and Cody shared a natural passion for music and the two spent time exchanging beats and songs in hopes of a potential collab. Shin and I chopped it up for hours, talking about our favorite fashion brands, modeling ambitions and arguing about whether or not Playboi Carti is top-5. The bottle of Hennessey we shared also probably helped in building our friendship. Akira was always dressed in a fit and spent plenty of time getting dope shots with Doddy. Over the course of the trip, we linked with the three and met more members of Cruel Palace proving that the relationship forming was one that we all truly appreciated.
The culmination of this relationship was a shoot with Cody, Shin, Akira and Alas for the upcoming Create More x Cruel Palace mini-doc. Cruel Palace posed in limited edition, Japanese Create More tees and individually interviewed to tell their stories. This collaboration dives into each member’s creative inspirations and tells a story about how their life in Tokyo has inspired their creative journey. Their passions and experiences are parallel to ours in New York, and we tell the same story just with a Japanese twist. I know Sam is beyond excited to share this project with you all and from the footage I have seen it will be one to remember. You should also be excited to see Liam’s on-screen debut as he kills it as the interview moderator.
Our trip to Tokyo was one for the memory books and we will be posting and looking back at the content we created for years to come. We are excited for you all to see the upcoming mini-doc.
Stay tuned and Create More.
–Christian Tiong-Smith
