PARCO AKA Parco, Co., Ltd. AKA Kabushki-gaisha Paruko

[Japanese: 株式会社パルコ] [related: Kazumi Kurigami]

---

Founded in Tokyo on February 13, 1953, PARCO is a Japanese retailer that, at its peak, featured 17 showroom-styled stores and employed almost 2000 people. The company is known for its affordable yet cutting-edge high fashion offerings alongside its unique and, at times, controversial approach to advertising. Starting in the mid-1980's, PARCO increasingly entrusted the experimental commercial photographer Kazumi Kurigami to guide its seasonal campaigns, culminating in a series of fiercely abstract short film commercials bearing no concrete connection to PARCO products or slogans, the most notable of which features a veiled Faye Dunaway silently peeling and eating a boiled egg. An additional ad consists entirely of French actress Dominque Sanda crying while smoking a cigarette.

Emboldened by the notoriety achieved with its Kuragami partnership, PARCO battled bankruptcy in the early 1990's following the failed launch of PARCO Collexion, a bizarre and borderline unwearable line of Japanese streetwear that was paired in-store with a soundtrack by the relatively obscure Japanese/German duo ßynthündßäx.