Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Japanese street fashion at the Textile Museum



The wonderful Textile Museum in DC held a show of Japanese street fashion, called Harajuku, this past Sunday.  In the Harajuku District of Tokyo, every Sunday afternoon Japanese youths gather along the Jingu Bridge to express themselves themselves through fashion and to socialize.  Types of Harajuku fashion include various Lolita styles (pretty innocence / Victorian lace), cosplay (costume play), and Visual Kei (pop-music expressed in clothing).  If you're tired of wearing jeans, here's a helpful how-to on Harajuku.

The fashion and modeling of local area Harajuku enthusiasts, including at least one woman from Arlington, was quite impressive. Their fashions showed dedication, passion, and a great spirit of play.  Some of their elaborate dresses the presenters themselves had hand-made.  Others expressed their fashion through their choices of bought pieces and accessories for their outfits. 

The event included a presentation on Harajuku by MC Nick Ferris, short presentations and question-and-answers with some of the participants, a Japanese quiz show, and a runway segment.  The Ode Street Tribune's reporter won a prize in the Japanese history category of the quiz show and thus underscored the worldliness that supports the Ode Street Tribune's foreign reporting.

The event attracted an unexpectedly large audience.  The 2pm show, set in a room holding about 50 persons, sold out.  The organizer then put together a second show for 5pm, which also sold out.  As of Wednesday of last week, there was a waiting list for tickets to the second show.

The Textile Museum presented the Harajuki show in conjunction with its current exhibition Contemporary Japanese Fashion: the Mary Baskett Collection. T-Mode, which is having a convention celebrating the fusion of Asian, Western and urban pop culture in Alexandria this April, co-presented the Harajuku show with the Textile Museum.  

La Carmina offers some excellent coverage of this Harajuku show.

Other local fashion news:
[see video included in this post]

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to the reporter on the staff of the Ode Street Tribune who won the prize for giving an answer related to Japanese history. The scope and variety of interests shown by the staff of the Ode Street Tribune is truly amazing. However, isn’t there anyone on the staff of the Ode Street Tribune that has an interest in economics? Unfortunately, the problems facing our nation and our world are mostly economic not artistic. I urge the management of the Ode Street Tribune to recruit some staff interested in economics to balance the majority of the staff that appears to be mostly interested in things artistic.

Anonymous said...

I disagree with the comment from anonymous. The Ode Street Tribune is refreshing and artistic. There are plenty of journals to read about economics!!

Douglas Galbi said...

This argument is pointless. The Ode Street Tribune sadly lacks the money to employ the services of a top-ranked economist. Readers interested in supporting the Ode Street Tribune's economic reporting should donate a large amount of money to the Ode Street Tribune.

Anonymous said...

I am surprised to see the Ode Street Tribune denying that they employ a top-ranked economist. Certainly the economist on the staff of the Ode Street Tribune is “top-ranked’ by some people. However, ranking is of no importance, ability is the issue and the economist on the staff of the Ode Street Tribune has demonstrated ability. It appears that Anonymous was merely suggesting that the staff direct some of their ability to some of today’s economic problems. Anonymous did not suggest that the Ode Street Tribune should stop their contributions to the arts. Anonymous merely suggested that directing some additional attention to today’s economic issues might be useful.

Katsuya Weller said...

8D Yay! Happy to see this up on blogspot! (for those wondering, I was a participant in this event).

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