3/13/2009

Fake school uniforms for real schoolgirls

The Kyodo Press of March 12th ran a story show on the left entitled: “Tokyo girls prefer school uniform-like dresses.” Sadly the Kyodo stories die after only a few hours so you most likely won’t be able to access the original story. The gist of the Kyodo story was that the Shizuka Fujioka (shown on the right and below) is a ”charismatic” fashion coordinator working for CONOMi Inc.’s new 2009 clothing line of fake school uniforms for real schoolgirls whose schools do not have uniforms.

For the past couple of years, CONOMi Inc.’s Brand School Uniform Collection has been a huge success among style conscious high school girls and this year’s sales have been high as the schoolgirls’ skirt lengths.

The appeal of real Japanese schoolgirls to wear fake uniforms is illustrated by the following The Japan Times story, “Confessions of a Tokyo shojo .”

….I go to a toritsu (public) school which means we don’t have seifuku (school uniforms) …but take it from me, when you're in high school, you need those seifuku. It’s so bad to walk through Shibuya Centa-gai and not have the breeze flutter through my short, pleated skirt, showing off my legs in their blue Ralph Lauren knee socks. So I just bought the full ensemble at a secondhand joint in Harajuku. These are called nanchatte-seifuku (”just-kidding” uniforms) and cost about 8,000 yen.
It’s a great investment. The minute you wear one, guys turn to look, and they range from the usual oyaji (middle-aged men) to the really cute 17-year-old boys wandering near the Beams building. The most glamorous makeover just can’t match the magic of a school seifuku.

Confessions of a Tokyo shojo The Japan Times
May 29, 2003

–from the online catalog of CONOMi Inc.’s Brand School Uniform Collection

Posted by Taro in General, Society | 5 Comments »

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1. MARKed TRAIL Says:
   March 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

   Hey old pedophile, Google cache is your friend. Here’s the full text.

   Tokyo girls prefer school uniform-like dresses
   TOKYO, March 12 KYODO
   Shizuka Fujioka (R), a ”charismatic” fashion coordinator at school uniform-like apparel…
   For teenage girls in Tokyo these days, a school uniform is not something evoking a spirit of discipline but something that symbolizes their sensitivity to trends in fashion.
   An increasing number of female students in high schools and even some in junior high schools in Tokyo prefer going to school wearing uniform-like clothes even if they have not been told to wear a real uniform.
   Yasuko Nakamura, president of Tokyo-based marketing company Boom Planning Co., said the trend is believed to have started around 2002, when she found one high school girl wearing different ”uniforms” every time she saw her.
   Nakamura later realized that what appeared to be school uniforms were in fact just their favorite dresses.
   ”The school uniform (for girls) used to be regarded as a symbol of an education with strict regulations. But today, wearing a uniform should be recognized as a privilege only for high school girls,” Nakamura said.
   Many magazines for young girls feature topics on school uniform-like dress, approvingly called ”nanchatte seifuku” (fake uniform), Nakamura said.
   Against the backdrop of such a trend, a boutique dealing exclusively with school uniform-like apparel opened in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district in February 2008.
   Shizuka Fujioka is a TV personality who works at the boutique CONOMi. Fujioka is nicknamed the ”charismatic coordinator” due to what her fans describe as her good sense in selecting clothes for potential customers.
   The shop has seen the number of customers jump four-fold since its opening and is organizing an event called Brand School Uniform Collection 2009 to exhibit and sell uniform-like dresses in Tokyo which will run through April 6.
   ==Kyodo

2. Gaspard de Coligny Says:
   March 13th, 2009 at 7:33 pm

   Ok, but do they have my size ?

   Where does Sailor Bubba get his stuff anyway ?

3. Dankman Says:
   March 15th, 2009 at 10:44 pm

   I don’t believe this at all. I work in a Japanese public school near Tokyo. My students wear uniforms. I haven’t even heard of a public school without uniforms. This article doesn’t make any sense at all.

4. Joe Jones Says:
   March 16th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

   Dankman: Aoyama High School in Tokyo and Kita-Senri High School in Osaka are two examples I personally know of (having friends who went there). Uniform-less schools are more common than you might think.

5. Tara Says:
   August 21st, 2009 at 10:40 am

   Look at all the anime and manga that have been coming out. The uniforms are almost always cute and trendy, for some reason, so it’s no wonder that girls got it into their heads to wear similar things to school. Many of those outfits would probably not pass an actual proposal for a school uniform though. Too many short skirts. lol

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