Fashion "Rules" for Japanese Women

can you tell so what kind of person is he or she and from the outfits maybe i think it's japan you're in japan we you retail that person so from their outfits did she just call me a slob hello world today we're going to talk with some japanese women about fashion and helping me out is my japanese teacher yamamoto sensei and she brought along some of her friends who are recent university graduates to explain to us the current fashion rules for young japanese women hi i'm sha hi i'm mao hi i'm hannah hi i'm lei we discussed everyday outfits recruitment outfits and job outfits but it became clear that to understand it all we need to turn back the clocks of time and start with what students wear at school luckily my kids made a video showing off what they wore to elementary school while my kids could wear whatever clothes they wanted all the kids had to wear the same school hat have the same randusteru style backpack wear the same kind of indoor shoes and wear the same gym outfit dyeing your hair painting your nails or wearing jewelry wasn't allowed so while my kids did have freedom in what clothes they wore and could even choose the styling of their backpack they also had to conform to a lot of rules most japanese kids go to public elementary school and would have had similar rules when it gets to middle school the rules become stricter and uniforms are mandatory for most for high school it's actually less strict than middle school but it really depends on where you go for one lady her school was quite strict [Music] um [Music] [Music] uh you have to wear it just correctly no if you cannot really fold it you cannot do anything with it oh did you have long socks yes mine was short oh sure there was actually i didn't have any strict rules i i was able to dye my hair i could put my makeup it's very so special yeah it's different yes and but i had my school uniform so i had to wear my skirts and jackets so that was the rule others think it was free for my school there are some people who was dyeing their hair but the hair color if your like hair color is too low then you cannot really see the difference so sometimes they can escape from that role but if you like really you know just bright really bright color teacher gives you that like a hair dye and then you have to dye your hair at school at school most people think that like black hair is natural and it should be nothing yeah sometimes teachers connect the image of bright hair color with the future not really good you know just for my parents the role is role so you have to obey the role when i filmed these ladies they had all just gone through the university graduate recruitment process for which they all bought recruit suits but this practice wasn't always the case the monitoring newspaper states that in 1977 the tokyo branch of the business association of university cooperatives well that's a mouthful and isetan formed a partnership to sell suits for job seekers under the brand recruit it is from that product line that the term recruit suit was popularized in japan at first the practice of wearing recruit suits was only for men but over time it became the norm for a woman as well so when i was a college student over 20 years ago we didn't wear regular suits so for me it looks a little weird all the same your colleagues your company force you to wear that regret suit why do you wear i don't know you it's more like a norm so you don't want to be like you know to get affected by your like clothes or something like that yeah so that's only in the same start line yes but it's all guessing don't you like to wear different clothes to show yourself or show your identity that's just scary that's not really too much like too much risk for that because if you're wearing those like a different clothes then you get much higher possibility that you're not gonna get the offer from the company yeah if you're doing the same thing with others it's you can you will know that you're the reason why you're not offered is just because of the interview if you can't get this chance to get in the company you have to wait for a year to get another offer or sometimes you don't have those kind of status as a new graduates like there is high risk for us to not miss the chance a practice that is still very common especially for large japanese companies is to hire new graduates once a year so if you don't get a good job during that hiring period and have to wait another year you may not be considered a new graduate and kind of seen as damaged goods so are you guys comfortable to wear that recruiter but you wear but it's the best risk like some company says that you have to wear like regular suits for the interview [Music] so some companies seem to wear something business business while some companies provide guidelines for what to wear there are also situations where the company doesn't meant to show so how can you search on internet or hear from senpai and sometimes you just need to have quote unquote common sense to know what to wear other times universities will provide guidance to new grads it's really funny that everyone says it's better to do this it's better do this but not really saying that you have to do this that's tricky like we have to take photos with this suit and oh yeah while in some countries photos on resumes are considered discriminatory it's basically a requirement in japan i also like this black suit it's not cheap it's quite expensive yeah but we only wear on this like yeah recruit suits are typically only worn when new grads are looking for a job and then maybe for the new employee entrance ceremony yes they have those and the training period how much 20 20 20. you're gonna oh yeah and that's cheap that's true there's older models yeah but it's not like different it's hard to tell yeah yeah i well maybe that's too casual yeah maybe they might think that is too like you're too used to it [Laughter] or like training term i have to wear my black suit so the companies like senpai can know that we are fresh for sure so if we like wear different clothes they can't notice but this is the first year or this is the second year why don't you just you know hold nakako you name the id yeah i'm afraid it's like changing yeah from companies is that it's not good for showing their identity or showing themselves to wear black suits or some companies are stopping but [Laughter] now that we've got recruit suits explained let's talk about workplace fashion rules these are the outfits the ladies would wear to their workplaces for the cosmetics industry you were free to pursue your own style but i think it was a given that you had to have some kind of style for consulting it was business casual and what you wore depended on the situation for it it was relatively casual but not as casual as the us whereas with real estate it was quite strict so by the time i'm jumping into this discussion we've already heard about many of the things you can't [Music] [Music] all right i think that's i also agree that's too cool [Music] i for me it's so who cares is really reasonable because you really have to protect your brand image like if you have someone who doesn't fit that brand image then you don't want to have those kind of people isn't it so yeah but sometimes it's really too far from the real really reasonable thing it's really troublesome to think about which is preferred to win so it's like oh like i don't know the borderline what's too casual or not too casual did you hear about the news that there's some companies force you to wear high heels or forbid to wear eyeglasses no no japanese are very i don't know fashion conscious and we are very careful and outfits or fashion or trends but so so what do you think when i go to my like college in japan i have to do my makeup and like choose clothes and go to study but when i studied in like college in other countries i only wear like beauty and yoga pants and not so like i don't wear makeup so much and if i wear too much makeup i was like a weird person oh are you going to party or something about that when i was in the united states just wake up and then wash my face and then go out that's it so i was like terrible yeah i like to see the pictures from like you know when i was in nice days because it was too like a you know the site in japan in countries we have to wear a lot of makeup it's not really like you decided tonight like everyone doesn't accept like me not making up or me not really wearing fashionable clothes so that's kind of hard yeah if you're in foreign country there is difference where you can be really have lazy style but then also you can show off your yeah i found that it's really weird in japan because you have like like upper limit and lower limit you have to be in that limit so but you have to be fashionable but you cannot be too fashionable i think i understand at the start yamamoto sensei asked me if i can tell who a person is by their looks my answer was that yes in canada i do think we judge appearances but it's not to the same level that you'll find in japan an example i can think of is the graduation and entrance ceremonies for japanese elementary schools there's no rule that parents have to wear suits or formal wear yet i ended up buying a suit only for those occasions i hate suits and never wear them otherwise but that pressure to look respectable is there whether at an elementary school entrance ceremony applying for your first job or simply going out on everyday errands one thing i noticed in japan is that there's a propensity to wear uniforms i think the reason why japanese are more concerned with appearances than other countries and why so many physicians have uniforms are very connected it's all about looking the part in this video i didn't have time to dig deep into uniforms but i hope in a future video i can talk about all the different kinds of uniforms that are worn in japan because there's a lot thanks to yamamoto sensei for arranging the interviews and of course extra special thanks to xia mao hana and rei for sharing their experiences thanks for watching see you next time peace what are the fashion rules like where you're from [Music] uh

Channel: Life Where I'm From

Views: 675,772

Rating: 4.9689088 out of 5

Keywords: japanese fashion womens clothing, japanese womens fashion, japanese fashion, ask japanese, japanese culture vs american culture, japanese women, Japanes clothes women, japanese fashion trends, japanese fashion school, japanese uniforms

Id: RwND7NGYL2M

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021