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★Fast fashion special★
23/MAY/2009 on air

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What are they saying? I can tell you…

What is this long queue in Harajuku? It was 29th of April 2009 that FOREVER21 1st store opened in Harajuku, Tokyo Japan. FOREVER21 is from the U.S, H&M which is just next to FOREVER21 is from Sweden, and we have ZARA from Spain, Topshop from U.K, collect point from Japan, all located in Harajuku. These shops are famous for kawaii trendy clothing for reasonable prices, and such fashion is called “fast fashion”. Harajuku has become a center of fast fashion battle.

There are some critical points that do not make fast fashion look cheap. With some creative ideas and a little bit of efforts, basic and cheap clothing can be really cool. Do you know “UNI-kakushi”? That means to do some makeover to UNIQLO clothing. UNIQLO is another fast fashion brand that Japan is proud of. Their clothes are very basic and durable with many color variations, but very cheap. What’s good about UNI-kakushi is that we can take a risk to do anything on the UNIQLO clothing, and if we fail, we lose only a small amount of money.

The man wearing a gold painted jacket did the spray painting by himself over the original UNIQLO red colored jacket.
Girls at deco-clo enjoy many ways of UNI-kakushi. Tokyo Kawaii TV interviewed the CEO of UNIQLO to ask what he thinks of UNI-kakushi phenomenon. He said, “We are dealing with clothes as parts. It’s all up to individuals how he or she wants to wear them.”

H&M is a good place to find a cheap celeb-kei (celebrity-oriented) sort of fashion. The head designer of H&M has visited Tokyo more than 20 times in the past 15 years. It’s called inspiration trip and she is inspired for a new design from this trip. She checks out small second hand clothing stores in residential area in Tokyo, and the button store where Paul Smith also likes to shop.

Shimamura is a Japanese long-established clothing store since 1953. Speaking of cheap Gyaru coordination, Shimamura has become a key player. Gyaru who like to shop and wear Shimamura clothing are called “Shimarah”.
However, Shimamura has not been like this. It’s only 8 years ago when they changed their taste. They enriched Gyaru and teenager clothing. One big question however is that buyers are all middle aged men who don’t exactly understand the sense of kawaii at all. They try to catch up with the latest trends by repeating a supervised tour to Europe every other month. They try to figure out what’s coming next and strive for marketing research.

Mama retro fashion cost nothing, as long as your mom was fashionable and kept her wardrobe in a good condition.

Kirin’s opinion:

There was a long line at FOREVER21 even in this summer. I didn’t feel like shopping there because of too many people : A long line to get into the store, another long line for fitting, and another one for payment.

UNI-kakushi looks interesting. If I were good at sewing, I’d like to makeover and create my own clothing from UNIQLO, but unfortunately I am so bad at it, I have no choice. My mom was very good at sewing, my grandma was also so good at knitting, but I feel myself very clumsy and I feel safer being away from these things. :p
When I was a child, I was wearing original clothes from my mom and grandma, which I didn’t like very much then, but now I think I should’ve been more grateful to them. :p