I was born into a family of tailors in Tokyo, three generations. From the time I was a young child, I had lots of opportunities to accompany my father to Ginza. We would go around by car to the wholesaler district to the fabric shop and button dealer, and then lastly to Ginza to the clothing store. This was the route my father always took for his job.

Around the time I turned 20, my father said, “You’re just about a grown man now, so you need a good suit!” With that, he made me one of navy blue. He added: “As an adult, you need to know about places like this,” and had me put on the suit he made and took me to one of Ginza’s exclusive clubs. It was after the economic bubble had burst in the early 90s, but the club was full of beautiful women in beautiful makeup and alluring perfume, the kind of women you don’t see every day. I remember concluding beautiful women are a very good thing!

Ginza became something more immediate when I was around 26. I’d worked as an editor at a number of publishers and after a while, I started working in the editorial department of LEON, the popular men’s magazine. The department was located near Ginza 1-chome, Kyobashi. I was there pretty much every day, so I became fairly familiar with the district.

Among all the places in Ginza where I have memories aplenty, one of my favorites is GINZA SIX. It’s simply because my favorite stores are there. Today I’ll briefly introduce you to the walking course I always take, one that always elicits sighs of delight, if not fainting spells.

I go first to DSQUARED2 on the third floor. From there I go see Neil Barrett, located across and to the left of DSQUARED2. Next is Gente di Mare, up the elevator on the fifth floor. I eat at Ginza Grand Premium Food Hall on the sixth floor, and afterwards make my way to Ginza Tsutaya Books.

I love each of these places, and each is indispensable in creating my trademark Hoshiba style.

Today, I venture first to DSQUARED2, which participates in Milan Fashion Week and carries a host of catchy items.

I love the denim in particular.

The type called Tidy Biker creates a tapered silhouette from thighs to hem. They’re high-rise but made to be worn low on the waist. DSQUARED2 designs are worn this way; they make your legs look short, which is offset by creating a long-looking torso that may happen to accentuate your obliques, a look the brand pioneered. Today I try on the Tidy Biker model for fall/winter 2019 (60,000 yen; all prices listed before tax).

In my case, my ideal style eliminates frills, doesn’t rely on a color or pattern, blends into its surroundings, and brings out the qualities of the individual wearing it. Of my close to 40 pairs of denim, most are black. Lately I’ve considered buying another pair of black denim, so, today, I’m entirely in full-on shopping mode.

DSQUARED2 denim puts the tag next to the zipper, a rather sexy position. I’m currently 46 years old. I’ve shopped at the store since I was 23, and I’ve seen the brand at Milan Fashion Week for the past 23 years as well. Most of the male swimwear models in the DSQUARED2 show have really lean, taut midriffs. They look really cool; super-sexy and very healthy.

In passing, the DSQUARED2 head office in Milan has a members-only gym and spa, as well as Ceresio 7, an Italian restaurant on the top floor I love, where Elio Sironi, formerly of Bulgari Hotel, flashes his skills. There’s a pool there, too. In the summer, it’s a gathering place for the city’s fashionable movers and shakers. The interior space was designed by twins Dean and Dan Caten, DSQUARED2’s designers. The Basquiat and Cocteau artwork in their personal collection are must-sees. It’s a place that embodies the brand’s ethos of eating good food, training the body, and enjoying fashion. You’re encouraged to visit, if you ever have the opportunity.

DSQUARED2’s denim is great, of course, but I can also recommend the suits. They stretch, and the shoulder line is really beautiful. Today I tried on a suit setup with a tight, one-button jacket (158,000 yen).

The suit is called “TOKYO,” because it is inspired by the impressions left by Japanese visitors wearing a short-hemmed jacket at Pitti Immagine. The other suits in DSQUARED2’s line are also named after world cities.

The upper body is contoured precisely, while the lower body is low-fitting and loose. This is the DSQUARED2 look. Next up is Neil Barrett.

I strongly recommend this brand for the ultimate travel suit. It’s a setup that lets you buy the jacket and slacks separately, and the elastic Techno Stretch fabric resists wrinkling. It’s easy to wear. The fabric is strong and retains its shape well, which means it can be creased beautifully and resists stretching out at the knees.

Since his time as director at Prada Uomo, designer Neil Barrett has had a strong reputation as a suit maker. After launching his eponymous brand, he’s continued to design suits like this, which I picture as modern (jacket 139,000 yen; slacks 65,000 yen). I can’t let them go: I have around seven of this type alone in different colors.

On a rather different note, I recently bought these sweatpants (76,000 yen). I’m on trips overseas around two months every year, and these sweats recover their shape well and resist stretching out at the knees too; they’re invaluable on flights.

Next up is Gente di Mare, a mixed-label brand with an ‘Italian coastal boutique’ theme. It’s one of the few shops dedicated solely to European brands. Every time I go I find things men really like and things I didn’t know about at all, so I’m very much a fan of the shop.

For example, this navy blue coat (79,000 yen) is from the outerwear brand HEVO, which was established in 2010 in Puglia, Italy. Coat styles have changed a great deal in the past few years, but this brand was ahead of the game in incorporating women’s trends into men’s fashion: big silhouettes, rounded A-lines, and the drop shoulders of raglan sleeves.

It’s made primarily of high-end wool and features a belt at the waist; it feels a bit like a foreign military uniform. I put it on, and it gave me the look of a cool middle-aged dude, no? FORZA STYLE, the online magazine I’m editor in chief of, put in a special order for the coat, and it sold out almost immediately.

The Ultimate 100+5 Brands Loved by Yoshimasa Hoshiba, my recent book, introduces all of these—the HEVO coat, denim from DSQUARED2, and Neil Barrett suits. If you get the chance, the book goes into some detail about quality products from various brands you can use to create your style and silhouette.

At Gente di Mare, I also recommend DUNO, an outerwear brand that specializes in down launched in Empoli, Florence in 2010. Integrating high quality materials, cutting edge technologies, and traditional Italian tailoring techniques, the coats fit naturally into any urban setting. The coats use double packing to keep the down feathers from coming out. They should retain their insulation for a long, long time. I learned of this brand when I was looking for a new style of down jacket. When I tried it on, it made my head appear smaller, which is one of the reasons I recommend it. It’s the GEYSER (79,000 yen).

You can hang it off your shoulder like this as well.

Carthusia fragrance, which comes from a monastery on the island of Capri, is a treasure known only to very few, and is something you should never forget to buy when visiting the island. Invigorating, fresh-picked lemon leaf mingles with the aroma of fresh green tea to produce the fragrance Mediterraneo (50 ml, 12,000 yen), the one I especially like.

Incidentally, Capri is famous for its lemons. Even the carpaccio is doused with lemon, and the limoncello is so, so good. It’ll leave you swooning. When it comes to food, cheap or expensive matters less than whether it’s so delicious you feel faint. On my walks at GINZA SIX, I usually go to Ginza Grand Premium Food Hall, order broiled eel in a box or chicken-and-egg rice bowl, and fortify myself for a stretch of hard work. With the chicken-and-egg rice bowl, I’ll think, “It tastes a bit rich today” or some such thing—that’s how often I have it.

Today, I order the broiled eel in a box (4,000 yen). The domestic eel and sauce with Kyushu red sake go together perfectly.

If you’re looking for a great place to sit, I recommend the area near the windows facing the terrace. Here you can look down on Chuo-dori. The natural sunlight in the afternoon feels great.

My last stop on my walk is Ginza Tsutaya Books, right next to the food hall. From art books to fashion photo collections, I’ll sometimes buy as many as 10 volumes, including books for work and books that could serve as interior décor, and have them shipped to my house.

Today, I pick out a photo collection from a photographer I really like, Bruce Weber.

Seeing me, the photography concierge Fumiaki Bamba, who knows everything about the treasured photo collections in stock at Ginza Tsutaya Books and is also a buyer, recommends two special Bruce Weber titles.

The first is a photo collection from 1991 made for exhibitions that year at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles and the Parco Exposure Gallery in Tokyo, with text by William S. Burroughs, a major American author who died in 1997. It’s titled Bruce Weber (12,000 yen). The other is the inaugural issue of a magazine produced by Andy Warhol for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine 1983 Jan/Feb United States Olympic Special (29,000 yen). It features Bruce Weber photographs of the physical beauty of U.S. Olympic athletes. Judging by the cover, it looks arresting, totally wild. Of course I buy it.

This completes my tour of several places at GINZA SIX that help create my signature Hoshiba style. While my basic style is set at this point, getting here was no easy task. Along the way I have bought a lot and made many mistakes.

But once your style is in place, whether you’re a man or woman, you can make yourself shine.

GINZA SIX is full of high-quality products. It’s a good place for a good walk to develop a fine eye for what’s right for you. I encourage everyone to go and find the things that make you swoon.

Text：Yoshimasa Hoshiba　Photos：Yuichi Sugita　Edit：Yuka Okada（edit81）