Japanese Street Style #1

[purplelucrezia]

Originally posted by PrinceOfCats@Jan 7th, 2004 - 1:38 pm
Why is she dressed like someone's grandmother?

I think she looks sweet!

 

[strawberry daiquiri]

She had a lot to carry?

 

[Lena]

Originally posted by Christopher31@Jan 7th, 2004 - 9:35 pm
why is she carrying three handbags?

a stylist?
a make up artist/hairstylist?
simply a girl shopping, chic enough not to carry around silly standard shopping bags?

Why is she dressed like someone's grandmother?

grandmother??
bet you have a real stylish grandmother your highness

 

[crazyfordior]

I looove jap style!! Here in Milan few people are so crazy to put color and styles like Japs, but I really love ts and accessories

 

[strawberry daiquiri]

How the Japanese shop

It is 9am on a December day, and we are minutes from the opening of Tokyo’s gleaming new Christian Dior store. More than 1,000 shoppers — many of whom have travelled hundreds of miles, and waited for days — queue patiently outside the £20.5m shop. “It’s magnificent, I cannot believe my eyes,” says Yoko Onaka, 23, a secretary who has travelled with friends from Osaka. She has been queuing for two days.
Dior clearly feels that the money was worthwhile — the company is opening another, more lavish store in Tokyo this autumn. And it is not alone: the Hermès building in the Ginza district, is made of 13,000 handmade glass blocks, shipped from Italy; Prada has a much-praised glass store on Omotesando; and the Louis Vuitton shop in the Roppongi Hills complex looks like a nightclub, complete with late-night opening, flashing disco floor and a bar where customers can buy bags displayed on shelves like bottles of vodka.


The Japanese love of shopping has transformed Tokyo into the most progressive retail capital in the world. As Japanese tourists and their digicams fan out around the globe, increasing numbers of western hipsters visit Tokyo and return in a state of frenzied acquisitiveness — clutching the latest limited-edition trainers, rare one-off T-shirts and accessories never to be found anywhere else. In terms of instant retail gratification, there isn’t really anywhere else like it.

Tokyo has the most sophisticated shops in the world because Japan has the most sophisticated shoppers in the world. They are, for instance, the biggest buyers, globally, of luxury goods, accounting for 17% of Dior’s worldwide sales and a quarter of those at Hermès. In a work-obsessed culture, the Japanese take their shopping almost as seriously as their jobs. The post-war explosion of Japan’s manufacturing industry — in the 1960s, you were nobody without the three Cs: car, cooler, colour telly — gave them a taste for western-style conspicuous consumption that remains to this day. In Tokyo, this, alongside another national trait, self-discipline, has raised the creation of desire to an art form.

It’s a culture of mass consumerism, where everything you’ve ever wanted is for sale in 10 different colours, so selling is key. Take Revolver, a Japanese underground fashion label. A couple of years ago, Yakuza Kickz, a Tokyo rock band, began wearing clothes that nobody in Japan had seen before. Despite a lack of advertising, word soon filtered down that the clothes were by a new label, Revolver, and that they were on sale — if you could find the shop, which most couldn’t. A friend took me there. The store was in an ordinary house, down a side alley a few twists and turns away from the trendy Harajuku district. There was no sign on the front door, which was closed, so we stood outside. After a while, it mysteriously slid open. We stepped into a tiny lobby, a dark, claustrophobic space with no visible means of escape. Soon, another side door swished open and we stepped out of the airlock into a small shop where we were able to view the collection. We were allowed to buy a couple of pieces. Another day, we might not have been. Staff told us that the shop sometimes refuses to sell anything at all.

In Tokyo, customers appreciate having something nobody else has got. Tokyo’s biggest local success story is A Bathing Ape (BAPE for short), a casualwear label that has grown from a backstreet shop into a retail empire that sells children’s clothes and home furnishings, and now incorporates a café, a hair salon, a television show, a record label and collaborations with corporations such as Adidas and Pepsi. Though the empire has expanded, the air of exclusivity has remained — its Hong Kong outlet, for instance, is members-only. Everything comes in strictly limited editions, because, says Nigo, the owner: “I really don’t want a lot of people wearing my clothes.” BAPE customers are allowed to buy only one item in a product line — at FootSoldier, the sneaker store, your pair of trainers can be chosen from a conveyor belt, Yo Sushi!-style — and only clothing in their own size. Even though queues at weekends are long, staff in the shops will arbitrarily decide not to sell a certain item, covering, for example, the T-shirts rail for the day and refusing to let customers buy them.

Other small shops have taken exclusivity one step further by having impressive interiors, but barely any merchandise at all. One trainer store has just 12 pairs of sneakers displayed on a glass wall as art. And shops like Sophand Still Sequence sell only a few, carefully selected items to an equally carefully selected clientele that is willing to pay for the privilege. This need for exclusivity affects bigger retailers, too. Paul Smith, Britain’s biggest exporter to Japan, says he makes up to four deliveries of new merchandise a year to most of his shops worldwide, but his outlets in Japan get at least eight deliveries “because they always want something new”.

Exclusivity isn’t the only clever idea companies use to make their stuff irresistible. Service is traditionally a big deal in Japan. Customers expect their goods to be beautifully gift-wrapped, and want mailshots to keep them in touch with what is coming in and when — and, if they are regulars, birthday and Christmas cards, as well as gifts when they visit. “The level of service is unbelievable,” says the British handbag designer Orla Kiely, who recently opened her first Tokyo shop.


“The dedication is amazing.” Her current favourite is Desperado, a clothes shop with a garden in front, complete with picket fence and kennel. “No dog, just a kennel,” she says. Another shop is in a basement, with candles lit all down the stairs. “I thought: ‘My God, where are we going?’”

“In England, you wouldn’t get away with it,” says Paul Smith. “Everyone would think you were taking the mickey. People would say: ‘It’s limited-edition, I quite like it, but you’re mad if you think I’ll wait in the rain for three hours.’” Don’t think for a moment that means we Brits don’t want the gear as much as they do. We’re just more coy about it.

“You might not waste five hours standing in the rain,” says Lynn Robson of Frognation, the Japanese market research company. “But you’d spend five hours looking for it on the internet, in the privacy of your own home, wouldn’t you? For the Japanese, part of the pleasure is being seen doing it. Who knows?

Maybe they’d be filmed for a television programme while they queued. They’d like that.”

I'm loving the ending

 

[riz]

Originally posted by luvbrands@Dec 31st, 2003 - 9:24 am
i luvvv the way japanese people dress, so trendy yet funky!
i want to go shopping there sooo bad

Hi Luvbrands

I agree, they know hot to strut their stuff.

 

[tiffany]

Originally posted by purplelucrezia+Jan 7th, 2004 - 1:40 pm--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(purplelucrezia @ Jan 7th, 2004 - 1:40 pm)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-PrinceOfCats@Jan 7th, 2004 - 1:38 pm
Why is she dressed like someone's grandmother?

I think she looks sweet! [/b][/quote]
she does look sweet

 

[TrailerCouture]

what i find impressive in the way they dress is their modesty and femeninity

 

[purplelucrezia]

Originally posted by TrailerCouture@Jan 25th, 2004 - 10:46 pm
what i find impressive in the way they dress is their modesty and femeninity

Yes, they manage to look attractive and stylish without being overly revealing or conforming. I think us North American girls can learn a lot from them...

 

[rouge]

OoOOooH I adore japanese streetstyle. So colourful, funky and edgy.
Thanks for the pix purplelucrezia

 

[purplelucrezia]

Originally posted by rouge@Jan 27th, 2004 - 2:10 am
OoOOooH I adore japanese streetstyle. So colourful, funky and edgy.
Thanks for the pix purplelucrezia

Glad you liked them...

 

[Substance]

Lost in Translation is a great movie with lots of Japanese fashion and culture. There far more advanced in technology but behind western culture in movies and pop music. I can decide if there are ahead of Americans in style or not.

 

[Substance]

Sorry, I mean I can't decide if there advanced in fashion.

 

[As You Like It]

I have a whole collection of links for Japanese street fashion.

Japanese Streets is definitely one of the absolute best. I can't rave about it enough. The archives!

J-passion . net has some truly excellent photos, though the flash navigation is annoying and clunky.

StarLit 501 has some good photos on his page, though I think a lot of them are ripped off of other now-defunct sites. A lot of broken links, but some fun stuff. Here is his main page., and here is a large stockof cool images that you might find inspiring. A lot of this site is pretty out of date...the ganguro/kogyaru thing really kind of happened in the late 1990s and is done now, but a lot of American kids are taking up the ko-gal look for raving/clubbing.

Don't forget Metamorphose for adorable Gothic Lolita fashions. Indulge your inner Loli-chan. You can even buy their fashions online.

Takuya Angel kicks ***. You will be blown away, trust me. The website is in Japanese, but just click on everything...you will see some amazing stuff.

 

[purplelucrezia]

I already knew about the first few sites, but the Gothic Lolita one is a revelation! Their stuff is so cute, yet dark. Thank you so much for the links- I am now in the process of looking up the last one.
I think this dress is wonderful; I would soo wear it!

 

[purplelucrezia]

I love the back as well...

 

[HBoogie]

This outfit is just perfect to me.

 

[slinky_vagabond]

I'm inasne about takuya angel! i'm so going to the store on my trip to japan next year (that, and seeing some cool bands in concert.)

 

[italianice283]

Here are my favorites from http://www.style-arena.jp/street/shibuya/index.htm. (I know you guys posted this stuff like over a month ago, but I really liked this site). I like the more coordinated looks with less color.

This guy above looks like Bruce Lee! HOT.

These girls above look so adorable. Asian girls are so pretty...

 

[purplelucrezia]

Some of my newest favourites...