When Finding Your Style Meant Going Somewhere
Twenty years ago, I went to Harajuku and Shimokitazawa to find clothes. Now the clothes come to me — but I still enjoy going back.
In my twenties, I could spend part of an afternoon walking through Harajuku or Shimokitazawa looking at clothes.
I liked American casual fashion and vintage clothing. I would go from one shop to another, looking through what was there.
The point wasn’t always to find one particular thing.
Looking was part of the fun.
I still think it is.
Even now, I sometimes go back to vintage shops. Maybe once a year. I walk around, look at the clothes, and enjoy doing something that used to occupy much more of my time.
But most of the clothes I buy today don’t come from those afternoons.
They come from places like GU.
Or from a screen.
And I don’t think that happened because I stopped caring about clothes.
I think clothes simply began to occupy a different place in my life.
When Shopping Was Part of the Day
In my twenties, going to Harajuku or Shimokitazawa wasn’t simply a transaction.
The time spent looking mattered too.
There was a reason to walk into another shop even if I hadn’t found anything in the previous one. I liked American casual clothing. I liked vintage. So going somewhere with shops full of those things was itself something to do.
Twenty years later, there are more things competing for the same hours.
Travel.
Food.
Hobbies.
Other things I want to do.
So when I need clothes now, efficiency matters more than it once did.
I buy a lot from GU and online shops.
My body shape doesn’t change dramatically, so buying ready-made clothes online doesn’t feel particularly difficult. And I don’t feel that choosing clothes this way means giving up my own style.
In fact, I feel the opposite.
I can still come across something online that feels like me.
That distinction matters.
I didn’t stop wanting clothes I like.
I stopped needing to spend as much time going somewhere to find them.
Japan’s Shopping Environment Changed Too
My experience is only my experience.
It doesn’t tell us what happened to everyone in Japan.
But while my own shopping habits were changing, the environment around clothing purchases in Japan was changing too.
According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the country’s BtoC e-commerce market for clothes and apparel goods reached approximately ¥2.798 trillion in 2024.
The EC ratio — the share of the market conducted online — was 23.38 percent, up from 22.88 percent in 2023.
In 2019, it had been 13.87 percent.
That doesn’t prove that Japanese consumers stopped enjoying physical stores.
It doesn’t prove that people became less interested in fashion.
And it certainly doesn’t prove that everyone followed the same path I did.
But it does show something important.
Buying clothes online is no longer a marginal part of fashion consumption in Japan.
It has become one of the normal ways clothes reach people.
When Discovery Had an Address
That matters because physical places once played a particularly visible role in Japanese fashion culture.
From the 1990s into the 2000s, Harajuku became internationally known as a center of Japanese street fashion. The streets around Ura-Harajuku developed their own ecosystem of independent brands and shops.
Shimokitazawa became strongly associated with vintage and secondhand clothing.
For someone like me, who liked American casual fashion and vintage clothing, these places made sense.
If I wanted to look for something interesting, I went somewhere.
The journey and the search were connected.
That world hasn’t disappeared.
Harajuku is still there.
Shimokitazawa is still there.
The vintage shops are still there.
What changed for me is simpler:
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I no longer have to go there every time I want to discover something I like.
Discovery Without the Journey
There is a different kind of pleasure in finding clothes online.
It isn’t the same as walking through a neighborhood.
In a physical shop, discovery happens in space. You move through racks. You enter another store. Something you weren’t looking for appears in front of you.
Online, the route is different.
You browse.
You search.
You move from one product to another.
And sometimes you find something you hadn’t expected to find.
For me, that can still end with the same basic reaction:
I like this. This feels like something I would wear.
The difference is how much of the day was required to get there.
That is why I don’t see online shopping as the opposite of personal style.
For me, it became another way of finding it.
“GU Is Fine”
There is a joke I’ve seen on Japanese social media about fathers on their days off dressing almost entirely in fast fashion.
When I saw it, my reaction was simple.
I dress kind of like that too.
And it doesn’t particularly bother me.
These days, I can go somewhere relatively nice wearing GU without thinking much about it.
My attitude is probably best expressed in an ordinary Japanese sentence:
“GU着てればいいだろう。”
GU is fine.
There is no philosophy behind it.
It doesn’t mean I believe expensive clothes are pointless.
It doesn’t mean I stopped liking fashion.
And it doesn’t mean I would never spend an afternoon looking through vintage shops again.
It means that for much of my everyday life, clothes don’t need to demand the amount of time they once did.
That time can go somewhere else.
What Actually Changed
It would be easy to turn this into a larger story about Japan.
To say Japanese people stopped caring about clothes.
Or that fast fashion replaced individual style.
Or that smartphones replaced Harajuku.
I don’t think my experience proves any of those things.
What I know is much smaller.
When I was in my twenties, finding clothes I liked often meant going somewhere.
Today, it often doesn’t.
At the same time, Japan’s apparel market has developed a substantial online channel that makes that kind of choice much easier than it once was.
Perhaps that is the more interesting change.
Not the disappearance of fashion.
Not the disappearance of personal style.
But the separation of finding clothes from going somewhere to find them.
Sometimes, I Still Want to Go
And yet, about once a year, I still find myself back in a vintage shop.
I still enjoy it.
That may be the part of this story I like most.
Convenience didn’t make the old way meaningless.
Online shopping didn’t erase the pleasure of walking through a neighborhood and looking at clothes with no urgent reason to buy anything.
It simply meant I no longer had to do that every time.
Twenty years ago, going somewhere was part of how I found my style.
Today, much of that search can happen wherever I happen to be.
The destination hasn’t changed very much.
I still want to find something that feels like me.
I just don’t always need to go somewhere to find it.
And sometimes, I still want to.
