I Shake My Little Tush on the Catwalk

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Trip Start Apr 22, 2008 Previous
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  Tokyo, Japan
Monday, June 30, 2008

Paris, London, Milan, New York.  I thought I had stepped foot on the streets of all of the iconic cosmopolitan fashion meccas.  I knew Tokyo had a fashion scene but the throngs of Japanese that you see flocking to Louis |Vuitton in Honolulu made me think that they had a lot of disposable income AND limited access to those luxury brands back home.  Slap my ass and call me Charlie, I could not have been more wrong.

Never have I seen a more fashion forward city.  The men are dressed in fitted suits with tailored lines that make an average New Yorker look like they are wearing an over sized garbage bag.  The women in their skirt suits with perfect hair and makeup and 4 inch heels somehow traverse the city as if they were wearing sneakers (are they easy spirit 'looks like a heel feels like a sneaker'?) and are definitely not wearing anything from the Jacqueline Smith collection at J.C. Penny.  Completely unbelievable.  A walk down Omotesando past the 5 story Prada building, Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton displaced any misconceptions i had about Tokyo.  Not only do they have access to these luxury brands, they are aggressively buying them and are not afraid to wear couture on the streets.

An interesting trend around town was the number of designer bags.  I saw more LV logos, Fendi and Gucci in all shapes and sizes slung over shoulders.....MENS SHOULDERS.  Yes my friends, hand bags are a huge accessory for the men about Tokyo.  I'm also not talking about some male fashionistas parading around this way.  There were men going to and from work, guys in jeans, guys in hip hop clothes...almost any type you can think of...all sporting bags.  What you were wearing did not matter.  The only thing that mattered was that you were wearing a giant handbag.....WOMAN'S HANDBAG.  I saw too many men sporting over sized silver bags that would have had any Park Avenue Pollyanna salivating.

And then there was the street fashion.  No trip to Tokyo is complete without a day spent pounding the pavement amongst the 'cosplay' and goth kids of Harajuku or the uber-orange fake tanned bleached out hair boys and girls of Shibuya.  Words can hardly do justice to describe the people watching in these two parts of town.  I will simply have to let the pictures speak for themselves.  Needless to say, with each new neighborhood there was a complete shift in style and 'cool'.  It was impossible to get Right Said Fred out of my head.  Walking past the haute couture ships on Cat Street between Shibuya and Omotesand had me reeling with what may surely be one of the most well executed puns of all time: navigating the 'Cat Walk' between stores.  Tokyo I heart you.   

Check out my Tokyo Street Fashion pictures at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hewharris/sets/72157605888953184/

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