Tokyo street fashion: Dos and Donts

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I used to be really inspired by Japanese street fashion. It's not as great as it was in the fruity late 90s, but I still like looking at what people are wearing in Tokyo. I found a Tokyo Street Fashion website and thought it might be nice to use it for a game of Dos and Donts. Which outfits float your boat, and which sink it?

The site covers the areas of Harajuku, Shibuya, Ginza and Daikanyama. They all have different flavours. Harajuku is teen fashion, and is abuzz with kids dressing to get their photos in magazines. Shibuya is the 'here comes everybody' district, mainstream, commercial, brash. Daikanyama is for affluent twentysomethings. It's here (and down the hill in Naka-Meguro) that, to my mind, you find Tokyo's prettiest and best-dressed people. Ginza is for rather snotty label groupies, older, richer shoppers into prestige in the form of bags with gold straps and stuff.

Some recent pages:

November 2003 Harajuku
https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0311H.htm

November 2003 Shibuya
https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0311S.htm

October 2003 Daikanyama
https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0310D.htm

October 2003 Ginza
https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0310G.htm

Load earlier months by changing the address (the end bit is in the format: year month district). So you can check sexy mid-summer fashions in Shibuya, for instance, with:

https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0307S.htm

or spring 2002 in Daikanyama with:

https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/st0204D.htm

It doesn't go back beyond early 2002. If you want to see the heights of the 'Fruits Pink Baroque 90s' style, check Shift Japan's Girls on the Street archive. From 1997:

http://www.shift.jp.org/010/st/

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Harajuku, August 2003. Temperature 17C.

https://k4.kyoritsu-wu.ac.jp/~zyo/0308H18.jpg

Pink and yellow and white, asymmetric hemline, good hair: fresh!

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Harajuku, August 2003, 33C:

Elegant lines, I like the 'plus 4' breeches and general sci-fi vibe.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Daikanyama, May 2002, 23C:

Hmm, big hair and big shoulders. Not sure if I can deal with a Tpau revival.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:41 (twenty-one years ago)

March 2003, Daikanyama, 14C:

Oi, Miss Leatherworld! Go to Leeds, what are you doing in Tokyo?

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Daikanyama, May 2003, 30C

Tea cosy hat, maternity blouse, purple bloomers, snake skin boots, no no no!

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I was really hoping this thread was going to be:

"Tokyo street fashion: Dose and Donuts"

― donut bitch (donut), Saturday, 15 November 2003 18:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Shibuya, August 2003, 33C:

The serenity of an Indian prince or Persian pasha. Perfect for a hot afternoon sipping sugary mint tea.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Harajuku, March 2003, 10C:

I like him. Good spectacles, good hat, lots of op art flicker going on in the trousers. The acceptable face of indie.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Daikanyama, May 2003, 16C:

Lolita pink plimsolls, knee pads, flat janitorial housecoat, the pigeon-toed walk, the whippet physique, the Mary Quant hairband. If I said she was hot with those signifiers, what exactly would I be revealing about myself? What exactly are those knee pads for?

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

momus, none of your links or pics are working... (for me?)

― gygax! (gygax!), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

It must be because it's a secure server. The thread looks fine on my screen. Maybe you have to go in through their front door and get a cookie or something. If that doesn't work, well, dead thread, I guess.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

They work for me.

― kirsten (kirsten), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

not for me.

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

is it because they are ended .jp - just add a g (ie '.jpg') to the end and it should be fine?

― athos magnani (Cozen), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

No, jp is the URL ending for a Japanese site, jpg is the file format for pics, but both the jp and the jpg are in the right places in the addresses. It's weird they work for some people and not others. One thing about the site: the certificate is out of date. That brings up alerts on some computers and may block the site if you're behind a firewall or something.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:57 (twenty-one years ago)

The ladies in Daikanyama, October aren't looking so hot. I think they are taking the #1 point British trad/British country a bit too seriously. (I don't think I can make a pic come up though.)

(My computer brings up an alert, but if you say you don't mind if continues along to the site.)

― Mary (Mary), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

when i made it end .jpg it was all fine. when i made it end .jp nothing was fine apart from the wine i'm drinking myself drunk with.

― athos magnani (Cozen), Saturday, 15 November 2003 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

i have pics turned off, momus, and in the filenames tht turn up when you have pics turned off the file-endings are .jp each and every last one of them. so maybe other people try adding a g or does tht just work with me. (plus is that your real e-mail address momus?)

― athos magnani (Cozen), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I hate to say it but Momus is right: it used to be far crazier in the late nineties. I needed a medication against the migraines I got from all those teens. Love the Miu Miu shop in Shibuya! I nearly went bankrupt there.

― nathalie (nathalie), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

There is some very adept thigh high socks + knee high boots action in Harajuku, November.

― Mary (Mary), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

It's certainly a lot less pink than it was in the late 90s. The book Phaidon printed of Fruits magazine was that late 90s thing, and that's what tends to get picked up even to this day in western ads and things when they put J-youth in there. That or the ganguro craze, which lasted one short year circa 2000 -- though you can still see a few in Shibuya:

I wonder if the hemline theory -- that hemlines go up in boom times and down in bust -- applies here? The last couple of years have all been beiges, creams, blacks and whites in Japan, as the economy bottomed out. Now, though, there is talk of a return to growth. So I wonder if green shoots will begin to sprout sartorially? And even pink buds by spring 2004, if the economy is 'in the pink'? Another interesting correlation is between politics and Asian themes in street fashion. In the 80s it was actually trendy in Japan to go to McDonald's and wear American collegiate wear. Now, only black American fashions seem to impact there, in the form of baggy hip hop, skate and grafitti styles:

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:16 (twenty-one years ago)

this site is great - thanks momus.

― phil-two (phil-two), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I like this girl's brash 80s diagonals, especially since I just bought a sweater with a similar thing going on!

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 20:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I also like anything that resembles, but isn't quite, a 'skirt for men'.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 November 2003 21:16 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.imomus.com/geometra.jpeg

hmmm…

Would Stuart Maconie have gushed quite so much over Don't Stop The Night on this evening's Critical List if he'd had this pinned up next to the mic?

― trinnyandsusanna (chris j), Sunday, 16 November 2003 01:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I want that sweater so much.

― kirsten (kirsten), Sunday, 16 November 2003 01:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I'd prefer it if you had it.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 16 November 2003 02:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I'd hope Stuart Maconie would look at this thread and say 'Tokyo street fashion: what will we be thinking?'

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 03:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i really want to see this thread but i cant :(

― minna (minna), Sunday, 16 November 2003 12:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Love the sweater but the royal blue tracksuit bottoms with the saggy waistband are BLEAH. I may have to confiscate them later in the week.

― suzy (suzy), Sunday, 16 November 2003 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

wht are the dos and donts of tokyo street style these days?

do in helsinki, dont in tokyo?

― cozwn, Thursday, 15 January 2009 16:47 (sixteen years ago)

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