Blackface or a clever marketing campaign?

Imagine a female minstrel show with svelte legs and you might have the right image of this Astigu, a Japanese tights brand. The ads feature 11 good-looking Japanese models with short skirts showing off their legs. Familiar enough so far, perhaps, but then consider that the girls are all dressed in black — including their faces.

In most other countries, this would probably be too sensitive, though Japanese street fashion has the well-established “ganguro“, where girls would liberally apply dark tan to their faces.

The black is presumably meant to make a strong contrast with the girls’ legs — the focus of the ad — and to create an air of “mystery” (the campaign is called “the mysterious beautiful legs corps”). And we can also find some justification for it in the rather neat ad copy: Ashi wa kao (“your legs are your face”).

The main model is Astigu’s regular, Tao Okamoto.

Been there, done that. Sometimes it seems that fashion has little new left to offer. But then along comes another neat innovation that proves you wrong.

Fashion models strutting their wear down a red carpet catwalk is hardly new but when it’s inside a commuter train in Tokyo, well, then it feels pretty original. On April 14th this is just what happened, with a fashion show being held inside a moving train on the Keio Inokashira Line between Shibuya and Kichijoji stations.

The event was a promo for a opening of the new Kirarina shopping mall at Kichijoji Station on April 23rd. The show used three carriages in the specially convened train, featuring 14 male and female models including Karen Michibata (sister of Jessica, the future Mrs Jenson Button).

Although it wasn’t open to the public, the models showcased apparel from ten stores in Kirarina to around 100 invited members of the press and industry insiders.

We would hope this becomes a regular fixture on trains around Japan. It would certainly be one way to liven up the daily commute to the office!

[Image via Asahi and FashionSnap.com]

The end of an era.

Hostess culture magazine Koakuma Ageha will cease publication in the wake of the bankruptcy of its publisher, Inforest Publishing. The title first went on sale in October 2005 under a different name, it went on to become famous as the magazine of choice for gyaru. It promoted a unique kind of overtly glamorous look and featured actual hostesses as models.

Koakuma Ageha’s name meant “little demon swallowtail” (a play on agejo, another name for women who work as bar hostesses) and its target was female readers in their late teens and twenties. It spawned several “sister magazines” and special editions, such as Kimono Ageha (gyaru in kimono), Ane Ageha (for slightly older gyaru) and I Love Mama (for young gyaru mothers, naturally).

Not only was it a media platform for disseminating gyaru and hostess culture, it also provided fashion and beauty tips, as well as dealing with the “darker” side of the lifestyle, such as depression, sex and other problems that may result from being a hostess.

It first came out as a special issue of Nuts, a magazine targeting Shibuya gyaru. This was so popular that circulation was increased within days and a follow-up came out in April 2006. It then lost the Nuts umbrella and from October 2006 became a separate monthly magazine in its own right.

It hit circulation highs of 400,000-plus (who would have thought there could be so many wannabe hostesses and gyaru?!) in 2009-2010 and was defying the economic slump that claimed many other major magazine names in Japan. However, it has now apparently fallen victim to declining advertising revenue and the woes of its parent company.

Following the high-profile end of hostess magazine Koakuma now comes the closure of egg, another magazine that was a symbol of 1990′s and 2000′s fashion for teenaged and twenty-something females in Japan.

The collapse of publishing company In Forest did it in for Koakuma, though its figures were clearly on the decline. What about Taiyo Taisho’s egg? The company itself is not going bankrupt but it is jettisoning its fashion magazine arm.

The next issue of egg, issue 213 (the July issue), will be the last. It goes on sale on May 31st, bringing to a close a history just shy of 20 years.

In 1999 egg was said to be selling 500,000 copies packed with fashion and make-up tips for how to be a Shibuya gyaru, though it actually shut down briefly at the height of its popularity. A spin-off for male readers, men’s egg, was founded in 1999 at the height of the egg boom but closed in October last year.

Why is this happening? The simple answer is the overall decline of the publishing and media industries in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, a decline which has left so many casualties around the world. Japanese magazines have been slow to make digital platforms and find new readers. Magazines have also produced too many spin-offs and new titles, potentially diluting their readership into ever more niches.

Another reason is the changing tastes of fashion. In its very nature, a fashion is, well, fashionable for a time only and magazines have to adapt to the vicissitudes — but when your entire niche is disappearing, that doesn’t leave you much leverage.

Gyaru or gal culture is on the way out and Shibuya is no longer the fashion capital it once was. Gyaru culture magazines employed too many “reader models” and with the numbers of youngsters in Japan going down, high costs and declining readership is a bad combination.

Egg, we salute your reign and wonder what the future holds for the gyaru.

Do you remember in the 1990′s when everyone wanted to have Jennifer Aniston’s “The Rachel” haircut? Well, right now in Japan girls are also trying to copy a look. Nothing new in that, except this “copying” itself has become the trend.

It is called monomane meiku, literally “imitation make-up”, and involves the use of both cosmetics, hair styles and strategic face masks to turn yourself into popular models or celebrities.

TV personality Zawachin (21), aka Kaori Ozawa, started things off by posting pictures on her official blog where she impersonated famous people’s look, especially former AKB48 idol Tomomi Itano. She attracted such a following that a talk event in late April attracted 300 women, many of whom were wearing her signature face mask and make-up.

Japan is an imitation culture. The idea of mane is ingrained, from cosplay (dressing up as characters, typically from anime or manga) to fake food samples in restaurants and the way Japan has long imported, assimilated and then reproduced (with changes) foreign ideas and objects, from weapons to cooking.

Combine this with a strong native idol culture, where on top of “idols” like AKB48, models, actresses and singers also attract a following for being talented or attractive, but also for representing a certain kind of look that female fans want to acquire. This means that fashion models regularly release books and get thousands of hits on their blogs where they post pictures of their look that day (along with their lunch).

Zawachin can transform herself into actress Keiko Kitagawa, singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, figure skater Mao Asada, model Miranda Kerr (who is very popular in Japan), and more. Her book “Zawachin Make Magic”, released in January and in which she gives tips on cosmetics, has sold 120,000 copies. Her blog, in which goes into detail about the transformation process, has at times attracted over 1 million hits a day.

Zawachin has a repertoire of 60 people, including even male pop idol group Arashi. She says that “monomane meiku is different to ‘monomane‘ (impersonation) since anyone can do it”. With the right techniques and know-how, apparently you can become a star.

According to the Nikkei Marketing Journal, Zawachin is inspiring people as young as five years old to get in on the trend.

So next time you see someone on the streets of Tokyo who looks like a famous singer or actress, think twice before asking for their autograph. It might just be Zawachin or one of her many disciples.

UTme! is a new service by Uniqlo, the Japanese apparel retailing chain with its sights set on world domination. UTme!, as its name suggests, lets consumers design their very own UT t-shirts.

The customized UT tees can be ordered by the special app. After you have finished “having fun with t-shirts” via your smartphone screen, they are then delivered to your home or you can go along and pick up your order from Uniqlo’s Ginza branch, which until August has an in-store T-shirt printer to demonstrate the service.

As the retailer says:

Uniqlo presents a whole new way to have fun with T-shirts. “UTme!” allows you to design and purchase your original T-shirt. Using this app is easy. Just draw a picture and shake your smartphone!

Love it or hate it, we all shop at Uniqlo. Uniqlo may well be the most ubiquitous apparel brand in Japan and most of its clothes fairly generic, but now they are saying Uniqlo can be unique.

The service is available only in Japan and costs ¥1,990 per shirt (about $19.60), plus ¥450 for delivery, excluding tax. Delivery is free for orders of three or more t-shirts.

UT are the special range of Uniqlo t-shirts which have become a phenomenon in their own right. They regularly feature collaborations with international designers and iconic brands and pop culture characters, including from science fiction, anime, video games, and household products.

The t-shirt range even has its own concept store, UT Project, in Harajuku, and associating itself with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Nobuyoshi Araki et al has done much to lift Uniqlo up from its suburban mall image to some semblance of streetwear fashion status. And then for the people who just want characters, there are always Moomin, Disney and Gundam tees.

While the designs may be eye-catching and some of the collaborations jaw-dropping (Nigo and Uniqlo! huh?), the UT tees have become so successful that they are as generic now as the rest of Uniqlo’s clothes. UTme! presumably will put some of the spice back into the mix.

There is one snag. By designing your t-shirt via UTme!, you currently hand over all data and copyright to Uniqlo for free, meaning they can use it as they see fit (officially, sharing on their website and so on, but they might even make it into a product). So think twice before you use the service to make a prototype of a genuine fashion design idea you have. This has already been criticized by many local netizens and Uniqlo is reported to be considering updating the terms and conditions.

This article by Yulia Mizushima first appeared on Tokyo Cheapo.

Some outfits never go out of fashion. Kimonos are a prime example – they’ve been making people look elegant for centuries. These stylish rags certainly aren’t cheap though – unless you know where to look…

Kimono girls image via Shutterstock

If you stand in the middle of a scramble at Shibuya crossing, how many internationally-renowned, high-fashion outfits can you spot? I bet it wouldn’t take even a minute to spot at least a dozen without turning your head. Tokyo might be glorified as a fashion capital of the world, but no matter how “it” the handbag or how tailored the suit, chances are there’ll be someone else with the same outfit somewhere nearby. Next time, before you waste money on another unfulfilling retail therapy session, think about checking out your local second-hand kimono shop instead.

In today’s fashion world where unique stands above all, what’s more exclusive than the kimono? Leaders of the time-honored industry have traditionally catered to the status-conscious elite, but modern-day kimono designers and manufacturers are having a hard time selling what typically costs thousands of dollars to anyone who isn’t a refined and wealthy middle-aged Japanese woman. As a result, while most of today’s kimono industry is struggling to stay above water, budget second-hand shops are gaining popularity.

Local furugiya. Image by Chris Gladis, used under a Creative Commons Licence

You can pick up an authentic kimono for $100 or under, if you rustle around the right places. Your local furugiya (the name for a second-hand clothing store) is your first stop when looking for kimonos at an affordable price.

If you don’t know where to look, don’t stress — a lot of second-hand kimono shopping can be done online. Rakuten’s kimono page is a cheap, mix-and-match stop for easy access to inventory from hundreds of shops from all over Japan. it also gives you a quick and informative overlook of the different types of kimono and accessories out there. Random fact — Rakuten apparently is responsible for a full 10% of the kimono industry’s sales these days. Kimonos on Rakuten range from below a hundred dollars up to a couple of thousand — keep an eye out for special deals.

Another competitive option is Ichiroya, an online flea market that sells genuine, family-owned kimonos from Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe, with the goods ranging from vintage to practically new. Their kimonos cost anything from 28 to 1 800 dollars, but most seem to range in the low hundreds. They have a handy Youtube page with short guide videos on kimono purchasing and wearing too.

If you can speak decent Japanese and are more inclined towards brick and mortar shops, any of the numerous Tansuya stores are ideal places to score a routinely-offered discount, as well as face-to-face kimono dressing assistance. A popular chain that sells new and recycled kimonos, Tansuya is a go-to choice for both kimono experts and newbies. Their prices are known to be a bit higher; second-hand kimonos usually cost a couple of hundred dollars, but if you’re just after the experience, you can rent one for around ¥8,000 a day. Depending on the branch, you can complement your shopping by exploring Japanese tea culture at the historic tea house district in Kagurazaka, ride a rickshaw in Asakusa, or do a bunch of equally cool stuff near the 38 other stores scattered around Tokyo.

Inside a kimono shop. Image by Okinawa Soba, used under a Creative Commons licence

Lastly, my favorite second-hand kimono shop is only a five-minute walk away from JR Harajuku Station. The family that has been running Sakaeya for over 50 years is now on Facebook and Tumblr (in English), making their social media a great place to start your kimono quest. The ultimate in cheapo kimono, Sakaeya not only sells second-hand kimono for as low as ¥1,000 (yes, you read that right), they also rent starting at ¥5,000, which includes dressing assistance and a tea ceremony. For a little extra, you can join their dance and photo shoot events as well. Plus, their CEO is an adorable cat named Totoro and their bucho, or department chief, is a raccoon who lives at the nearby Meiji Shrine. Why aren’t you trying on a kimono already?

Ed’s note: Once you’ve got your cheapo kimono, all you need is a sword and bit of bamboo to complete your experience. Death stare optional. Woman in bamboo forest pic via Shutterstock.

Read on Tokyo Cheapo.

The Embassy of the Republic of Colombia in Tokyo put on a show for shoppers at the Roppongi Hills on a summer evening this week. These models performed in a fashion show wearing dresses and other accessories inspired by origami, reports Shingetsu News.

Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper, though here the designers are not Japanese. Diana Gamboa, a visual artist, created the origami dresses while the metallic animal sculptures the models are dragging behind them in the performance were courtesy of Luis Fernando Bohorquez. The soundtrack is also traditional Colombian music.

While it looks very pretty, what does it all mean? Shingetsu reports that “the audience was told [the performance expressed] a love story between a man and a woman.” The performance was called “The Cyclops: a Love Story” and took place at 66 Plaza on the evening of June 14th.

UNIQLO’s spin-off casual wear brand GU has opened a major new branch at Parco Part 3 in Shibuya.

In fitting with its name GU — pronounced “gee you”, a play on the word jiyu in Japan meaning “free” — a new service lets customers really see how their potential purchases look on them. Not only can you try the clothes on, you are then allowed to wear them outside so you can see how you look in a more natural context and can also check out other clothes in Shibuya to coordinate your fashion.

Of course, you still have to return the clothes and/or pay for them (when we said that “GU” meant “free”, it’s not the “no cost” meaning!) on the same day.

The new GU Shibuya Parco branch is located in the baseball floor of Parco 3 and, appropriately for Shibuya, specializes in women’s wear. The new shopping-fitting room service is apparently inspired by the concept of providing a “Girls Special Shop”.

The GU Fitting service will be a trial initially available until the end of June only for 30 customers per day. There is also free shipping for purchases over ¥3,000, in case you don’t want to be burdened by heavy shopping bags during your later jaunt around Shibuya.

All you have to do is go up to the GU Fitting counter with your choice of clothes (up to three items), give your name and phone number, and then you can saunter out of the store with the clothes on. You can then check out other apparel and try to find the right item to match your new GU wear, or even go home and see how the clothes fit in with the rest of your wardrobe.

The only condition is that you have to return the clothes within business hours of the same day but you are under no obligation to buy them. GU says that items returned but ultimately not purchased will then be used for mannequins and won’t be sold.

No photo ID is required. GU trusts shoppers to give a real name and phone number, and of course return the items to pay!

I think we can safely say that this service would never work outside of Japan!

We’ve already seen the Animal Face Pack, which took animals from Tokyo’s famous Ueno Zoo and turned them into beauty tools.

Now how about taking this fashion idea even further?

Zoo Jeans [sorry, link seems broken right now] is a range of clothing designed by tigers and other animals. Huh? Yes, we’re not lying.

The denim materials have been attached to tires and balls and then given to the animals to play with. The materials are carefully reclaimed from the creatures and, complete with claw and bite marks, are made into the final jeans by a small factory in Okayama.

There are three models, each with the scratches and bites of their respective “designers”: lions, Ussuri brown bears and Bengal tigers.

Here’s a kind of making-of gallery…

You can then wear jeans that make you look like you have survived a battle with nature’s most fearsome beasts… and lived to tell the tale.

All the clothes will be displayed at Kamine Zoo in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture, from July 6th to July 21st.

The tiger and lion jeans will be available for one week only on Yahoo! Auction, starting on July 7th. Profits from the sales will be donated to the WWF and Kamine Zoo.

Sumitomo 3M has created a special website for creating fashion items online, controlled by the volume of your voice. The “Scotch Summer Holidays Family Kousaku Paper Fashion Kids” (or just Scotch Kousaku — “Scotch handicrafts”) allows users to design their own clothing using the internal mic in their computer and voice recognition. By printing the design out, budding fashionistas can then assemble the pieces together using scissors or paper cutters.

Scotch Kousaku is live now and is available until August 31st, making it a cool activity for parents to give kids to do at home while they are off school.

The Scotch brand has been doing these kinds of online campaigns locally for kids and parents every summer since 2012 and 2014′s one is built around the idea of turning children into young designers.

The site is only in Japanese but is fairly easy to navigate. 3M provides you with ten wallpaper designs — a few basic clothes (t-shirts, dresses etc) and accessories (bags, hats) that are plain to get you started. You then supply the colors and patterns by selecting certain options — and shouting! The colors then respond to the volume and tone of your voice. For example, the more noise you make the more various multicolored leaves, splashes, circles and other patterns will appear.

Since kids are well-known for being loud, this is the perfect way to vent their vocal and creative skills.

Here is one we tried making… All right, we’re not natural fashion designers! Clearly we aren’t loud enough.

Here are some examples that 3M have put on the website to give you inspiration. They are downloadable as PDFs.

The clothes come in three sizes: Small (100-110cm), medium (110-120cm) and large (120-130cm).

Sumitomo 3M likes to do these kinds of campaigns to liven up the potentially mundane world of adhesive tape and Post-its. A few years ago they even had a very funky pop-up store in Omotesando that was more like an arts and crafts outlet than a shop to buy stationery.

There are no details available at present but the Scotch Kousaku website also promises a bricks-and-mortar store from late August where kids can try their hand at designing clothes.

For really releasing the need to shout, though, we recommend the Shouting Vase!

Wearable Clothing by Urban Research is a virtual dressing room interactive digital unit was recently installed for a trial run in Ikebukuro Parco department. The fashion brand Urban Research created the unit which can be set up anywhere there’s electricity and wifi, and enough space. Like the many next-generation smart touchscreen vendors now commonly found in central Tokyo train stations, it uses a camera to scan the user’s body and in this case lets you browser Urban Research products, “try” them on, and connect to the label’s e-commerce platform so you can purchase them online.

The first test unit was available as a pop-up for use by shoppers (in English, Chines or Japanese) in Ikebukuro from June 17th to 30th. Look out for similar machines in train stations, departments stores and airport terminals; Urban Research plans to install six virtual fitting room vendors in 2014 and to have around 100 units in operation by 2020, including overseas. The brand already has a showroom in Taipei and wants to push the new virtual dressing room to Asian markets in the future, since it is much cheaper than opening up actual branches in new regions. Its online retail arm also currently occupies roughly a 20% share of its sales and it is aggressively expanding on this.

This kind of tryvertising technology has been developing in Japan for several years now. Past successes include Shiseido’s “digital cosmetic mirror”. Japan also has a well-established tradition of “unmanned shops”, from its thousands of varied vending machines to roadside vegetable stalls.

The Wearable Clothing system uses Kinect, a 60-inch LCD display, and an iPad. Kinect is increasingly the software of choice for these augmented reality virtual fitting units; a similar one for Topshop also utilized back in 2011. Urban Research spent a year working on the project with a web development company, spent some ¥20 million ($200,000) to create two initial vendors.

It responds to the user’s movements in real time as you try on your selected item (3D “real-time fitting”, as the makers term it) and even promises to give you a virtual experience of the texture of the clothing materials (so-called “cloth simulation”). As the Time Out blogger put it, “way more satisfying than fiddling with zips and buttons and bad lighting in a real dressing room.” If what you browse or try on takes your fancy, you can then add it to your basket and use the QR code it prints to access the brand’s online store and complete your purchase of the item.

Urban Research is boasting that this is the first example in the apparel industry of a single unit offering a virtual fitting and retail service all in one, as well as coordination with users’ social media.

The Wearable Clothing virtual fitting room is planned to appear next at Tokyo Skytree’s Solamachi mall this August.

The question, though, is whether in Japan, a culture with a very strong customer service ethos, could these types of virtual vendors truly take off and replace staffed stores completely?

[Image sources: here and here]

Toyo Tire and Rubber Co., Ltd. has created a series of yukata based on the tread designs of three of its tire products.

Here are what the Toyo tire tread yukata look like, modeled by Toyo employees. While you might associate tire treads with a somewhat rough or dirty image — since they are the parts of the tire that are gripping a road surface — or at least to be rather brawny or tough, the resulting yukata are as colorful and fun as you’d expect from the summer wear.

Yukata are, of course, Japanese summer kimonos and a frequent sight at firework displays and festivals in the hot months, though we’ve never seen any designed from tires!

“In order to give customers a sense of the rich expression of our tires,” Toyo says, “which are renowned for their original designs, we had our tread designs tailored into the patterns for yukata, a garment commonly worn during summers in Japan. By transposing the originality of tires, normally thought of as a simple round, black object, into the feminine world of color dimensions apart, we have created another unique touch point distinctive of Toyo Tires.”

The particular tread patterns come from popular Toyo tires PROXES R1R, OPEN COUNTRY M/T and NANOENERGY 0, while the dyeing in the yukata is in a traditional style.

The bad news is that that tire tread yukata are not for sale, though Toyo, after announcing the project back in July, promises to use the yukata at company promotional events.

[Hat tip to @nippon_en]

The fashion accessory brand Q-pot, known for its chocolate-themed products, has got together with Sharp to create a special limited edition Q-pot. Melty Chocolate TV, which it is selling exclusively through its online shop and Harajuku store from September 17th.

Obviously, like all of Q-pots sugary accessories, it’s not actually made of chocolate. Don’t try eating the screen! The frame is in fact black walnut wood. Also look out for the ten ants disguised around the TV.

Why ants? Well, ants like chocolate and this is a Japanese pun. The word for ant is “ari” and the word for ten is “tou”. In this way it is saying both “There are 10 ants” (ari ga tou) and “thank you” (arigatou). Quite what the gratitude is for, we’re not sure…

The “melting” chocolate part can be taken off and attached to wherever you want it to be on the TV, and the whole thing turns into a mirror when you turn off the power.

There is even a box for the remote control box in the same design and the whole frame can be hung on the wall.

The Q-pot Melty Chocolate TV does come at a price rather more than a bar of chocolate — ¥171,000 (over $1,600), plus tax, to be exact. That’s about 17 times what I paid for my television set, though mine is made of boring materials like plastic.

The Q-pot. brand was launched in 2002 by Tadaaki Wakamatsu. Its previous headline-grabbing products and projects include the Q-pot Cafe in Tokyo and a series of Sharp chocolate phones and iPod accessories.

The first one came out in July 2013 and caused quite a stir. Now comes the follow-up.

“Suichu Ni-so” (“underwater knee-high socks”) is a photography series by Manabu Koga devoted to — you’ve guessed it! — young ladies diving under the water wearing knee-high socks (and swimwear too, of course). The idea sounds ridiculously simple but actually the visuals are quite fresh, almost hypnotic, like a whole new aquatic landscape.

Koga’s new 96-page photography book “Underwater Knee-High Girls plus” hits local stores on October 20th, priced ¥1,800 (around $18) plus tax.

Part of the appeal comes from the fact that the models have all kinds of props with them, some of which — like umbrellas, raincoats and rabbit ears — just shouldn’t be there (i.e., underwater) in the first place. Apparently the knee-high socks are designed especially for diving in, created by a “mecha designer” who is also working on the new “Gundam Build Fighters” TV anime series.

Models featured include Risu Shima and Manami Yamaguchi.

Mt Fuji, being not only the tallest mountain in Japan and also a symmetrical beauty of nature, has always lent itself to being a motif for artists and designers to exploit. Perhaps starting with Katsushika Hokusai in the nineteenth century, perhaps no other landmark in Japan has been so reproduced and commodified.

This only increased when Fuji was given UNESCO World Heritage status last year amid a frenzy of self-congratulatory media coverage. The result is that it seems everywhere you look there are Fuji-themed products. Sure, some are tacky but a few of them are very good quality indeed. We are particular fans of the Fujiyama Beer Glass.

Now one of the top names in Japanese fashion Issey Miyake has got in on the Fuji craze as part of the five-year anniversary celebrations of its Aoyama store move.

The Pleats Please Issey Miyake series are only available from the brand’s Aoyama branch and focus on Mt Fuji and Otafuku motifs. The Mt Fuji design is for a rather snazzy skirt, available in three colors for ¥34,000 ($312).

Issey Miyake have also created some t-shirts with motifs of Otafuku, the female version of the folk character Hyottoko and another icon of Japan. The Otafuku t-shirts come in two colors and two designs, costing ¥16,000 ($150).

For more modest budgets (and more practical functions), we recommend the Nippon-Ichi Fujisan Umbrella. This is also a combination of Mt Fuji with a design label, this time Nippon-Ichi (Japan Market), a label by Yu Nakagawa focus on crafts with a contemporary chic twist.

Here the canopy of the umbrella is decorated with the snow-capped Fuji peak as seen from above — it’s a classic image of Fuji — and if you look closely, you’ll see that the image is actually composed of mini triangular Mt Fujis. The name “Fujisan” here is also a clever Japanese pun, meaning both “Mt Fuji” and “Fuji umbrella.”

Available from JapanTrendShop.

It’s official. Having glasses is cool.

Japan has long regarded glasses and eyewear as serious fashion items, which is why companies like Jin and Zoff go to great efforts to market their products in interesting ways, such as setting up vending machines for glasses.

Glasses are so cool they have even inspired their own typography by font designers.

And now glasses have their own dedicated hipster fashion magazine.

“Optical” will be published four times a year by Yoshimoto Books, with the first issue going on sale in Japan on September 25th. Aimed at men and women who wear and like glasses as lifestyle and fashion accessories — and not just tools for seeing better — the front cover features comedian Naoki Matayoshi and model and actress Akiko Kikuchi, who is also a part-time editor herself. Needless to say, Matayoshi and Kikuchi all wear glasses, and very snazzy they look in them too.

The content includes photo stories, interviews with celebrities who wear glasses, and more. The fashion pages include tips on coordinating your specs with your wardrobe in various scenarios (trips to a cafe, the park, a bookstore, etc). There is also trivia, shop guides, and other articles, all themed around the art of having a cool glasses lifestyle.

The publisher is a subsidiary of Yoshimoto Kogyo, the entertainment giant, so we can expect future issues to feature plenty of content with Yoshimoto comedians.

“Optical” is priced ¥926 (about $10) plus tax.

Less is more, as they say, and beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. These two truism perhaps best sum up one savvy project by a talented fashion design student who has found success already at a young age.

Let’s be frank, most Japanese woman are not well-equipped in the chest area. The slang for this in Japanese is hinnyuu — literally “poor breasts”. But Gomi Hayakawa doesn’t agree. The 19-year-old has taken the concept of being flat-chested and replaced the first Kanji character (for “poor”) with one that has the same sound but means “quality”.

The result was feast, her line of bras and lingerie for women with modest chests.

And now to fund her first fashion show on November 30th at Shibuya’s Garret Udagawa, she has taken to crowdfunding service Campfire. She aimed to raise ¥250,000 (around $2,300) by the end of October.

Let’s keep in mind that Hayakawa is still only a first-year student at Tama Art University. She clearly knows how to market her ideas, not to mention having brilliant design ideas in the first place.

feast sold out of its entire 450-item run in the first day when it was launched earlier in the year. It received a lot of attention online and from some mainstream media outlets, and also found some free publicity from cosplay models like Luchino Fujisaki. She has since launched a second line of feast items (A cup or smaller!), with colors inspired by sweets.

The fashion show Hayakawa is planning will feature DJ and VJ performances, new feast lingerie, and other “interactive” elements. She said she doesn’t just want to present designs to people — she wants “to design people”. The fashion show “RPG” will be themed around the concept of a role-playing video game and in this vein Hayakawa has even created a video game as a taster, plus this promo video.

On her Campfire project Hayakawa offers donation packages starting at a mere ¥500 ($5). At the time of writing she has already achieved almost double her funding from over 60 funders, proving yet again that she has really tapped into a formidable niche here.

Feast or famine? I think we have the answer.

Japanese women are known for being on the slender side but beauty of course comes in all shapes and sizes. As such, we have seen a shift towards a greater mainstream acceptance of larger ladies in the Japanese fashion world, which is typified by women with spider-thin arms and legs and chopping board-thin bodies.

A pioneer in this was La Farfa, the first fashion magazine in Japan for women who can be described as pocchari — an informal Japanese word that can be translated as “chubby”, though its nuance is not at all negative (quite the opposite, the word often has a cute connotation).

The launch of La Farfa was followed by Japan’s first pocchari fashion show, featuring only women of a certain size range.

And now we have Yumetenbo + plumprimo, a new Android and iPhone app on the Yumetenbo (“Dream Platform”) system that showcases the apparel brand plumprimo, which as its name suggests, is exclusively for plus-size women.

Yumetenbo runs a fashion e-commerce service for women. The new partnership with plumprimo will allow users to search for plus-size plumprimo items on Yumetenbo + and buy them through the Yumetenbo platform. While there are a lot of niches in Japanese fashion and, as we said, you might be forgiven for presuming Japan didn’t have much demand for plus-size digital fashion tools like this, the makers are hoping for 10,000 downloads of the free app in a year.

Here are some examples of plumprimo’s range.

Last month United Arrows’ en route brand ran a special “crowdsourced fashion show” on the streets of Omotesando and Harajuku.

In the words of Contagious.com, The Snap Up campaign saw “fashion brand encourage the public to act like the paparazzi in Tokyo”.

We’re a little late to the party with this story but because it’s pretty cool, we reckon it still merits a write-up one month after the fact.

En Route sent models for three hours wearing its 2014 autumn-winter line out into the streets during the Vogue Fashion Night Out, the annual bonanza which sees lots brands and stores in Omotesando running special evening events.

Members of the public were invited to hunt for the wandering models, take their pictures, and then upload them via the dedicated The Snap Up iPhone app. These were then judged in realtime and uploaded to the campaign website. The selected images netted the photographer a small cash prize of ¥1,000 (under $10).

And apparently there was a mysterious “Cashier Man” also walking the streets. If they stumbled across him, you could swipe your phone on his arm and claim money on the spot. Nice! According to Contagious.com,1,000 people took 27,000 photos.

Here’s a trailer giving you a taster of the campaign.

Although the photos themselves no longer seem to be available, on The Snap Up website you can even watch a four-hour-plus “live” video of the event.

En route is aimed at men and women in their thirties, centering around fashion and sports under the concept of “Wearable Tokyo”. It opened its first store in Ginza in September, shortly after it ran The Snap Up campaign.

In Japan privacy has more respect than other places and TV shows will typically blur out the faces of random people who happen to walk into shot during filming. There has also been a lot of brouhaha recently about fans snapping photos of celebrities without explicit permission from the person being lensed.

And so for a brand to encourage profligate photography and indiscriminate social media sharing is quite a bold marketing move, locally at least.