Shopping Japanese clothes online in U.S

It’s been a while since Japanese fast fashion brand Uniqlo’s gained a popularity in U.S. As the company’s executives say it’s edge is not that they offer latest trends at cheap prices, but they provide functional clothing with high-tech features.

Uniqlo's global flagship store, Manhattan

If my memory serves, Uniqlo’s first hit was fleece jackets, which has improved and developed it's function over the years while the price’s never increased. It’s about 20 USD and doesn’t look sucks, having a lot of color variations, and most importantly, it is really light and warm.

The second hit is more remarkable since the winters in 2007~2008 they were literally soled out in any of their shops. It’s a under wear line called Heattech. As it’s name suggests, Heattech has 8 high-tech features to keep your body warm and make it easy to maintain. This heattech was a first one I got from Uniqlo and ever since it’s become an indispensable item in winter seasons. Just as it’s fleece, this underwear line is warm, very comfortable to wear, and maybe it’s antimicrobial feature prevent from smelling bad. It has nothing unnecessary, just a plain or I should say simple or minimal design that never stand out but fit every kinds of fashion. Heattech is packed in plastic pack like a medical equipment which add a hyper industrial flavor from imaginary Tokyo.

Summer Girl, Uniqlo

But if I’m asked where I get basic fashion items from Japan when I’m in America, my answer’s not gonna be Uniqlo since, at least for me, they are just clothes not fashion items. In other words, you need a decent bread and butter at an affordable price every day but you can’t say it’s a dinner if you have only that on the dining table. You need a soup, a beef steak, fried potatoes or a hamburger, etc. in order to be satisfied your taste bud. But also you don’t want to use a lot of money for them right? I always buy clothes which are pretty standard, never get old, and never fail :) So after all these two are my frequent websites when I want to buy fashion items from Japan.

Design Tshirts Store granith

Granith has been famous for it’s Tshirts design. They have two stores in Australia, 3 stores in Taiwan, 2 stores in Hong Kong, and many in Japan of course.

They literally produce a countless number of Tshirts of different design every season. But their name Tshirts store doesn’t simply mean that they just offer Tshirts but it’s actually a design philosophy of their products. They make Sweat shirts, shirts, pants, coats, even accessories, all of them are simple and honest never complicated but still stylish just like Tshirts.

They launched iPhone App recently, which make browsing tons of their products on your iPhone as easy as on your Mac or PC.

They are ” sold for refreshingly realistic prices”, I nearly forget to say this but you can guess this from their name, T shirts are always real stuffs in our life right?

ZOZOTOWN.COM

You can find almost all famous fashion brands from Japan in ZOZO. This company also have Korean and Chinese version of same websites as well as overseas one. My favorite point of this website is that it provides detailed information about size and design of each item, but they don’t accept return due to a size issue.


Over all I prefer shopping online to going out to shops. I simply don’t want to waste time and energy to take trains and walk to there sometimes only to find out there’re nothing I want to buy. But the biggest reason is that in online stores I can browse hundreds of items in minutes which help me search out simple and minimal clothes suit my taste at minimum cost of time and energy. Of course this doesn’t work when what you’re looking for is very expensive or latest trends, ‘cause it’s just too risky to buy those things online. But since I rarely buy such things I usually… almost 50 % of clothes I currently own were bought online.