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Kawaii Underwear
18/MAR/2009 on air

Underwear is part of fashion. Showing them off from low-rise waist is cool. In Japanese, we would call it “mise pan”. (underpants to show off) The underwear Cameron Diaz was wearing in the movie “Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle” was from a Japanese brand named MIKERA (It used to be available from this link) and this spreaded “mise pan” trend for girls in the world.

In Shibuya 109-2 fashion department store, there’s a store exclusively deals with “mise pan” for men. It opened 2006 and is a very small store, but its sales is top class in the building. Tatsuya Arai, 26-year-old guy is the designer of these cool men’s boxer briefs.
The top selling one was however, Hello Kitty’s boxer pants.
Why Hello Kitty for men? Japanese young guys like to wear cute underwear for girlfriends to be pleased! How cute they are these days! These underpants are for men but as they are just so cute, women also like to shop them for themselves to wear at home.

“Mise pan” actually is nothing new. As you know, it was originally started from the U.S in the 1990′s. Calvin Klein was the first starter. The difference of “Mise pan” boom from those days and nowadays is that trunks are replaced by boxer shorts.

Do you remember mori fashion? Mori bra, meaning a stuffed bra to make big-looking breasts, has become popular among girls. Rienda is the brand name introduced in the episode. Reiko Nakane, the designer and CEO to this brand used to be a popular shop girl. At the age of 23, she
established her lingerie brand especially targeting Gyaru as she realized there was no such brand ever existed in Japan. Her mori bra has 2cm depth of pad, which is twice as
much as ordinary one, and thin (7mm) shoulder straps that make us look slender in spite of the volume in the breasts. I think this contrast is good!

If you are interested in cool Japan sort of underwear, this is it!
Rogin‘s designer was inspired from historical Japanese warriors’ armor styles. The first 3200 pieces were sold out very quickly. Why? This captivated men’s heart! Ms. Otomo is originally a classical Japanese dance teacher, but she is also a fashion stylist who has experience of working with Patricia Field, a famous fashion stylist for Sex And The City!

Mr. Nogi, the president of the company says he wanted to make underpants for men, for occasions as to try a luck or to make critical presentations, for example. Ms. Otomo faithfully duplicated Nobunaga‘s
armor style. What’s more, they are made of cotton gauze to let air through and as a result, they are 7 times more air permeability than ordinary underwear. You can imagine how comfortable it will be to wear them.

Mr. Ikki and Beni-chan tried to design their original pants. Mr. Ikki got imagination from Ninja and Beni-chan imaged Cleopatra.

At a luxurious boutique in Ginza, they make haute couture dress from as many as 40 process of works all by hands, one by one. The dress is originally luxury lingerie but is designed appropriate as a party dress and it’s priced about 60,000 yen (US$600) each.

Finally the episode introduces a 21-year-old student who won Triumph inspiration award from an underwear fashion show. She expressed how women would feel inside in her work. Rhinestones mean tears from eyes. This unique underwear of hers is going to be sold at 31 countries in the world.

Kirin’s opinion:

I can understand that underwear is part of fashion.
If I were a man, I’d like to try the armor-style boxer briefs on, as they look cool and so comfortable! Men wearing Kitty-chan (Hello Kitty is called Kitty-chan in Japan) is nothing weird in Japan. I see young guys like cute stuff, too. But does this sound strange in your country?

If you are interested in shopping cool boxers in the episode, check out here! (No.1 online shopping mall in Japan. They ship outside Japan. For detailed info. please read here first!)

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