Toby is a fashion researcher in the UTS Imagining Fashion Futures Lab and an authority on Japanese fashion and popular culture. His current research focuses on the history, contemporary forms and changing meaning of luxury in Japan, revealing shifts in definitions of social value and patterns of consumption throughout history. 

Toby joined UTS after more than 16 years at the University of Tokyo and Bunka Gakeun University in Japan. He is the author of two books: Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History (Berg, 2009) was the first English-language book to explore the entire historical sweep of fashion and clothing in Japan, with a particular emphasis on the modernity of Japanese clothing and its implications for contemporary theories of fashion. This work cemented Toby’s reputation as an authority on Japanese fashion history. His second book, Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018), looks at fashion as a central component of popular culture.

Toby is a founding member of the Research Collective for Decolonialising Fashion, an international group that aims to construct alternative narratives in the field of fashion research to challenge the dominant Eurocentric discourse. He is the guest editor of a special issue of Fashion Theory (September 2020) that explores decolonising fashion where he writes about Japan and its journey through clothing in the modern period.

His current research includes a body of work that imagines non-western decolonised versions of fashion history. One project, The Changing Conception of Luxury in Japan, traces the history of Japanese luxury consumption and the shift from mainstream fashion brands towards more indigenous concepts and practices.