red_swirl

No, not an entry along the lines of "What Not To Wear", indeed, I reckon Trinny & Susannah would be dead set against most of these clothes on my body type.

But I'm not talking my body type, I'm talking what I'd need to wear here in Tokyo to fit in. Which I don't, I'm reminded everyday - the guys in the sewing machine shop knew immediately which machine I'd come to pay for, even though I've never seen them before ... wonder what the description of me was? ... foreign, obviously. And I agree with L you can see a foreign face in most big crowds, true, but just the one.

Anyway, in Tokyo I should restrict myself to black, beige, white and navy. Perhaps some grey or pink.

There's a lot of colours I'd wear without thinking that I don't see much here, like red, green, purple ... and a number of fashion colours I was surprised not to see more of, like yellow, cobalt and purple (again).

And I should have:
- a beige or white trench, maybe with bows on the cuffs;
- a jeans jacket, with fancy top stitching;
- suits, boring ones, no extreme burda-style cuts;
- jeans, several;
- lots of tops for layering;
- leggings, preferably with lace edging;
- funky lacy sockettes to wear in my sandals;
- fluttery tunic/short dresses in coordinating small floral prints with off-white lace (see photo from CanCam).

I'd like to make the last item for myself, in a shape appropriate to my body type. But I probably can't use my carefully collected and much-thumbed burdas for it - there are also no plunging necklines in Tokyo, indeed necklines I felt were modest work-wear in Sydney look positively scandalous here. And no knits, most, like 90% , of clothes are wovens ... and not close-fit.

So even if I'd sewed what I wanted before I got here, I'd have to re-sew it again anyhow.

Posted by red swirl at 13:28 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know, I never tell you guys anything ... I moved to Tokyo for 10 months, saw cherry blossoms and never said a word. Actually, it would've been hard to, we had no Internet connection! Despite putting a lot of effort into choosing a place to live & getting everthing set up beforehand, when we arrived, we found the connection worked for about 2 miuntes max., at random times of the day. Anyway, fixed now.

I chose this picture as I've always wanted to live in another country for an extended time, to see what everyday life really looks like, not just the pretty/fake touristy stuff ...
Now's my chance. Oh, and my chance to get a look at heaps of Japanese craft books, tools, fabrics ;)

Posted by red swirl at 16:15 | Permalink | Comments (0)