>> On my hopefully pending trip to Tokyo, I'm making it a self-assigned journalistic task to try and find out why is it that so many of the Japanese labels (including the 'big' ones that I know of, exempting the smaller ones that I'm sure would also blow my mind...) hardly make it over to Europe-bound stockists... or more specifically and selfishly London. It's a connecting question to why certain brands have different Japan/Europe/USA regional stock variations. Perhaps I'll get a big fat inconclusive in-need-of-translation mess but seeing as I have thus far loved the process of commissioning myself (when you think of bloggers in that way, I suddenly see "Saddo" branded across my forehead...), it's still an issue I'd love to get my investigative teeth stuck into.
In the meantime though, I'm consoling myself with the beginning inklings of e-stores such as Koshka. Based in Berlin, they aspire to "an aesthetic that encompasses both the calm and pure beauty of Japanese pottery and the jittering neon of contemporary Asian metropolis." Err... which perhaps is an English statment lost in translation as I'm not sure if Japanese fashion should even be let loose near those seemingly naive cliches. Still, the intentions are clear as they are now stocking Tsumori Chisato which is a good enough reason for me to give it a thumbs up seeing as Chisato UK-available stockists are literally a handful. Farfetch have a few pieces and now Koshka adds more to that pool...
Of course life would be a happier one with plait/rope suspender cloud wooley tights... I know tights aren't meant to be trews but perhaps an exception needs to be made when clouds and plaits and 100% opaqueness are involved...
Sticking to the hoisery category, Koshka also stock Ayame socks, made in the old city of Nara where Japanese artisan techniques and fabrications are applied to designs that are anything but 'old'... the sock drawer refuses to be shrunk and is actually the one category of wardrobe which I didn't reduce in my big clear out...
Through Koshka, I've also learnt that Hall Ohara a design duo I knew from their London-Tokyo love story, have renamed their label as In Process.
Shida Tatsuya's website is pretty scant with information or images but all I need to know is that I'm willing to restrict arm movement for this cracked metallic effect woolen mishapen cape that is THE chunky cocoon to fight of all the other chunky cocoons that are out in force for this winter...
