Hiroaki Ohya, the Japanese designer, was trawling through a flea market marveling at antique books when he came up with the idea to design books of clothing. He's said that at the time—1999—he was "disillusioned with the transitory nature of fashion... [and] struck with the permanency of books as objects that can transport ideas."

So he came up with the series The Wizard of Jeanz. It has 21 volumes, each a chapter in a version of The Wizard of Oz told through fashion. Each volume has two states of being: closed and unfolded. The closed state is a bound volume like any book, and every volume looks exactly alike, as pictured above in an image taken at Seattle Art Museum. They'd be indistinguishable on a bookshelf.

But their open states demonstrate a whole hidden world of ingenious folding. They unfurl into skirts and shirts and capes and jeans and dresses and jackets. The whole series is pictured here. Ohya used denim, bright-red sail cloth (as seen above), and floral-print cotton to tell the story. The spines of the books can appear like zippers down the backs, the flared book covers like wings.

Say what you will about Seattle and fashion. I say, wearing a book made of sailcloth would be Seattle incarnate.

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Designers is at SAM through September 8.