Liberty’s Japanese love affair – a 150-year-old relationship in retail

On the top floor of Liberty on Carnaby Street, tucked in a corner of the vast Tudorbethan building, an exhibition celebrates the London department store’s 150 years. I Am. We Are. Liberty (running until 25 July) is sold as “a journey through the Liberty archive”, and is quite literally that: a walk-through kaleidoscope bedecked in the exuberant multicoloured prints that have made the company’s name. 

Among several handsome 19th-century photograph albums in the vitrines, one stands out. “Japan”, it reads in capital letters. “A pictorial record by Mrs Lasenby Liberty.” Arthur Lasenby Liberty, who founded his namesake shop on Regent Street in 1875, adored Japan. As soon as the country opened its doors after Sakoku (the period of isolationism that lasted from 1603 to 1854), he specialised in importing its arts and crafts for the liberal, bohemian-minded customer he was cultivating back home. When he opened the store, one of his first three employees was a Japanese man, Hara Kitsue. As Liberty became, as Oscar Wilde put it, “the chosen resort of the artistic shopper”, Arthur and his wife Emma visited Japan for three months in 1889 – the trip that would result in the album, with photographs taken by her – looking for new craftsmen and new crafts to sell.

“Apparently, Arthur Liberty was the biggest spender of the year in Japan during his trip,” says Berenika Stachera, archive assistant at the store. “The royal family visited that year as well but he spent far more than them.” Archivists estimate Liberty spent around £25,000, which in today’s money sits somewhere between £2.7mn and £3.8mn. And as investments go, it’s still paying off. This summer, the Liberty exhibition travels to Osaka, where it has been chosen to represent the UK at World Expo 2025. 

It won’t only be commemorating the past, says the company’s managing director Andrea Petochi, but celebrating the present and future too. Japan still represents “the second biggest market of sales in the world for Liberty”, he says. The company has had a subsidiary established there since the 1980s, with a design studio developing original and adapted prints specifically for the Japanese market: “Japan sells approximately 1.5 million metres of fabrics per year, more than £13mn in business.” According to Petochi, if you added up all the business that other companies and small producers make in using Liberty textiles, “you’re talking about more than a billion in size”. It all seems to justify Petochi’s statement to the governor of Kyoto when he met him: “I am convinced that there would not be a Liberty today without Japan.”

In a small archive room in the Liberty HQ, Stachera and design director Mary-Ann Bartlett Dunkley parse century-old fabric swatches and catalogues, revealing traces of the Japanese influence at the store. Sometimes the DNA is obvious: one of Liberty’s most famous prints is Mitsi, a ’60s riff on a cherry blossom motif sold since 1875; another is Hana, spotted with undulating poppies and created in the 1880s. Landscape prints have been especially popular in the past few years; Dunkley pulls out a large, richly textured swatch named Mount Edo. “It’s a classic ‘rolling hills’ landscape, but it feels like you’re much more in Japan,” she says. A powerful mix of Japanese codes with a Tudor craft twist, it’s as though Hiroshige had taken residence in Hardwick Hall.

The visual exchange between east and west had begun well before Arthur Liberty arrived there. As Ester Coen, curator of the Liberty exhibition, notes in an accompanying essay, “Japan became [for Arthur Liberty] a wellspring of inspiration. Its design principles – linear, graceful, abstract – spoke directly to the sensibility he and his peers were cultivating… But, in a curious twist, those very traits that seemed innately Eastern had themselves been influenced by earlier European engravings and prints, which had made their way to the Pacific via missionaries and explorers. This mutual fascination gave rise to […] a feedback loop of influence.”

Arthur Liberty didn’t just come over and buy everything to flog it. He was wary of how Japanese craft might be diluted and bastardised in the exchange. He strove to maintain a certain quality – and purity of approach. But this all made the relationship a little paradoxical, adds Stachera. “England has a weird love affair with Japan where it loves Japan for its authenticity and its traditional aspects; but then Japan is really interested in the west. And with the progress, they are losing that ‘pureness’ that first attracted a lot of Europeans.” 

I am convinced there would not be a Liberty today without Japan

Today, the marriage is straightforwardly happy – if, like any successful marriage, there is an element of pragmatic adaptation. Since Liberty set up its Japan office in 1987 (where today five designers work on both original and adapted prints), it has created an Eternal collection, where it sells the signature prints tweaked for a local market. In fact, not tweaked but rewired. Dunkley shares images of the five bestselling prints there last year: most of the buoyant, near-psychedelic colour Liberty is known for is gone. Betsy, a much-loved floral staple sold in bright pinks, yellows and blues in London, becomes much more washed-out in romantic retro pastels when translated in Japanese. “The nostalgic charm of our 1930s florals are without a doubt some of our most sought-after,” says Takashi Matsubara, managing director of Liberty Japan. Dunkley also flags Sleeping Rose, a linear motif in beige and olive neutrals created by designer Akira Minagawa that looks deeply Japanese, albeit with the distinct flavour of William Morris’s arts and crafts.

Liberty silk Strawberry Thief Furoshiki wrapping cloth, £275

Other collaborations aren’t quite so muted. From Japan With Love (2020) invited eight Japanese artists to create a capsule collection with the design studio, and these often have a much more familiar pop. Liberty has also produced more than 40 designs incorporating Hello Kitty in a collaboration that has lasted 15 years; find Hello Kitty roaming through a London landscape stocked with red double-deckers, famous bridges and, of course, the store itself. 

For Petochi, this is just the start. “Japan is going to grow,” he says. “This year we expect to increase sales in single digits, and double digits in profit. It’s also very healthy in the way it’s built: we’ve got 22 employees total and we are hiring year on year.” The visit to World Expo should cement that. The event expects 28 million visitors; the UK Pavilion should receive between 700,000 and one million. Petochi thinks that the UK government asked Liberty to participate because “we’ve been present there for many years, we create employment… there’s a dialogue. And it’s the beginning of a commitment for the next 150 years.” 

I Am. We Are. Liberty, edited by Ester Coen, is published by Trolley Books on 18 July at £80

The Financial Times and Nikkei are hosting a two-day event of panels in the World Expo at the UK Pavilion on 8-9 July. For more information, visit ukatexpo2025.uk/