Dressing Loud

Tokyo summers are brutal. Rainy season first—everything damp and heavy—then heat that’s relentless. You sweat through everything by noon. One summer I was buying replacement t-shirts at the H&M in Shibuya almost every day. The register guy started saying my name before I got to the counter.

But if you walked through Harajuku or Shimokitazawa, you’d see kids in clothes that made no sense for that weather. Bright colors, clashing patterns, layered fabrics that guaranteed you’d be soaked. They weren’t trying to be comfortable. They were just refusing to disappear.

Everyone else was trying to minimize—dark clothes, thin fabrics, anything to avoid being noticed and sweating through it in silence. These kids were the opposite. Taking up space. Being obvious about it.

There’s something I like about that stubborn refusal to shrink, the insistence on color even when sensible people would just wear something plain and suffer quietly. Not because it matters. Just because.