belstaff shop london “See someone I like, and ask them or somehow communicate to them that I’d like a photograph,” says Bent matter-of-factly of his approach to street-style lensing, the efforts from which are now immortalized in his new book, Asian Street Fashion, which will be published in the U.S. this month by Thames & Hudson. It’s a timely release: The fashion world’s eyes are trained on Tokyo this week, where Dior is unveiling its pre-fall 2015 collection.The book dispels what many have come to expect of street style from the region: Absent here is Harajuku’s lollipop palette, the outré ensembles with fantastical flourishes that for a time defined Japanese—and by extension, continental—proclivities. “The most shocking outfits I see these days are in the West,” says Bent, referring to the feeding-frenzy of look-at-me dressing around New York, London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Weeks. “In Asia, I feel like style-conscious people are doing the inverse—a lot of people are responding to well-developed and mature fashion.” Indeed, logo-centric brands have been less popular in places like China of late: Asia’s increasingly discerning customer is, in turn, increasingly looking for refinement and taste over anything ostentatious or spotlight-hogging. Bent’s photographs show hundreds of examples of that search for the antidote to OTT style—just look at Yuiko in Tokyo, with her smart, mottled navy A-line trench, or Weisan Hsu in Taipei, wearing a demure adobe-tan skirt and blue blazer.