Looking for passion in second hand fashion

Living in Tokyo, you come to expect everything at arms reach, from fast food, to DVDs, magazines, tickets and toilets ECT. When it comes to clothing and street style, also the same convenience applies. Depending on personal choice everything you need for a new look is usually located in one store.
As for the street style that Tokyo’s youth flaunt in Harajuku, this look for me is associated with second hands clothes markets and charity shops where each item you wore was purchased with care and love, a hidden gem among the rails and baskets of cast offs. You would find something different that not one other person could possibly own.


Walking the markets of Portobello and memories of Greenwich market on a Sunday I always thought the most interesting and stylish shoppers in London were the ones that passed by the stalls of common black velvet jackets or cheaply printed t-shirts. Instead they would be searching the piles and piles of rags and clothes thrown into a discount basket, they had a eye for something that would suit them, or create to fit them, The other advantage being that these cast-offs where the cheapest bargain’s to come across.


In Tokyo this kind of barging hunting is not so easy to do. In Harajuku the stores are filled with customized jeans, retro T-shirts and sunglasses, but for me it seems like the look has been commercialized, lost is the charm of finding something that you desire, instead I feel like most people are just buying into a trend, without the passion.
The stores are generally over priced, jeans becoming 8000 yen (40pounds), while in London or my local town I would only pay 2pounds or 50p (100yen) if I got lucky.
The cost of these items has really shown Tokyo’s street style to be commercialised. What about the young people who can’t afford to spend this amount of money, but have the creative eye for fashion, they have to compromise.
When you walk around London and you spot a person oozing with style and individuality you really notice that’s its not about how much they spent on their wears but how they took care and passion for shopping and customizing the smallest of details.
How can everybody in Tokyo look as stylish when most have bought into the retro/urban craze?
Of course you still can notice the ones that can really look sharp and stunning, while others are all just a bit too similar. But hasn’t the wow factor gone?
The great thing about shopping in Tokyo is that it is difficult not to find something stylish to throw on, at a price, and at the risk of being upstaged with someone wearing the exact same outfit at a party, just with better hair.

I have been searching for a cheaper alternative in Tokyo for some time, looking around local shops in the residential suburbs but with no luck, and sometimes an even bigger price tag.
I remember finding a used clothes shop somewhere between Matsudo and Toride on the Joban line. The clothes seemed a bit cheaper and a more random selection than in the city, and today I searched Ueno market where I found a huge array of stylish men’s clothing and second hand shops. It was quite a treat. Although many of the prices were absurd, looking for the cheaper gems seemed possible. Dangling from a rail on a stall selling used naked Barbie’s with burnt hair, broken cameras and old anime soundtrack records, I bought a lovely elegant silver chain mail clutch/side bag that fits my camera and mp3 player perfectly all for the bargain price of 500 yen.

So where does the balance of style and individuality come into play? How can a young Tokyoite stand out from the crowd when everyone else is trying to do the same?
With Tokyo fashion week now over, and with more and more countries looking at Tokyo as a fashion capital, the competition to stand out and be innovative is getting tougher; many young people are striving to be in the industry as stylists and designers. Will Tokyo’s fashion speed up as a result? Or will we be seeing much of what we have already seen?