Nasty Mondays

It snowed last night, and while it's warmer today, it's wet and slick outside, and drizzling unmercifully. Therefore, I tossed on my LL Bean blucher mocs, LL Bean Norwegian sweater, and LL Bean raincoat over a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren khakis and an American Living shirt. Off to work on my thesis! Books are held by my Hybrid bag.

Fair Winds and Following Seas.

Why So Puzzled?

Blazer by Uniqlo, Shirt by Brooks Brothers, Bow Tie by Banana Republic, Pocket Square by Deco, Watch by Brooks Brothers, NATO strap by American Eagle Outfitters, Belt by Northern Expressions (made in Canada), Khakis by Deco, Socks by Uniqlo, Tassel Loafers by Colehaan.

Fair Winds and Following Seas.

$8 shirts! $8 shirts!

Oh, American Living, how I adore you. Both FEC of Unabashedly Prep and I have spoken highly of this brand, and it just keeps getting better. RIGHT NOW, depending on your size, you can get high quality Ralph Lauren shirts (of the same quality, in my opinion, as the Polo line) for $8, $18, or $30. While I typically choose only to pick up dress shirts, there are also the same types of things you would find in the Polo line including khakis, cords, rugbies, fair isle sweaters, repp ties, and a vast array of polo shirts. For the dress shirts, some come with pockets, some come with logos, a few come without pockets or logos (my preference, but very hard to find). Why pay $75 for a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt when you get get an $8 American Living shirt made from the same material, at the same quality, likely in the same factory? Nope, I didn't think you had a reason either. Better yet? The madras is made in India, but unfortunately, while you won't find China, you'll still find places like Indonesia, but then you get that with the Polo line as well.


Another photo taken with my iPhone, just to see if I could do it better. This one was done with the flash on and with HDR enabled. American Living's Boys XL 18-20 fits me perfectly, and it's great to know I can just grab a few shirts and go. I chose a warm flannel in yellows, greens, and blues, and a light madras in red, white, and blue. There also appeared to be a blue Pierce check, which I bypassed because I have a blue Pierce check in Vineyard Vines. I was eyeing the red and green Pierce checks, and should they still be there next week, I will snap them up at the higher $18 asking price. There were also some decent red base and green base stripes that I'll consider as the least of the bunch should I have some extra cash. Finally there were red, blue, and orange ginghams for $30 in men's small. They're a bit roomy compared to the Boys XL 18-20, and thus not my first choice, but I loved the ginghams. Still, $30 is a lot to pay when I'm getting used to $8 or $18 shirts that fit perfectly. I really wanted this great soft blue and green tattersall I found in 14-16, but alas, no 18-20, so I was denied. A shame, because, you guessed it, it was $8. I just hope they eventually release the ginghams in 18-20.

If you're on the smaller side, either as a male or a female, I urge you to make your way to your nearest JCPenney and pick up some of these awesome shirts for pennies on the dollar, and if you take care of them, they will last you just as long as any dress shirt you may have with one of the little horsies on it. The Eagle and Flag is the new improved Polo Player. I'm a believer.

Fair Winds and Following Seas.

iSport

I've never been much for the iPhone camera, and I have the 4, which I suppose I've heard is pretty decent. Almost all of my photos are taken with a Canon. Do you think this iPhone photo came out well enough?

Shirt by GANT Rugger, tie by The President, rugby by Polo Ralph Lauren.

Fair winds and following seas.

I Wear Minus The I #2 - Longing for Spring

Corduroy Blazer: American Eagle Outfitters $14
Pierce Check Button Down Shirt: Vineyard Vines $24
Seersucker Repp Tie: Tommy Hilfiger $5
Madras D-Ring Belt: Comme Ca Ism $5
Dark Denim Jeans: Banana Republic, at least ten years old, price long forgotten.
Motif Socks: Polo Ralph Lauren, Christmas present
Penny Loafers: Bass Weejuns "Logan" $99

Fair winds and following seas.

Kyoto Animation (KyoAni)

One of the things I love most about Japan is being able to track down places that appear in animation, movies, or television shows. Especially if I had seen them before I moved to Japan. It's always a very surreal experience to come across a building or park which you instantly recognise, but have never actually seen before. At least not in person.

While many movies/shows take place in Tokyo, not all of them do. The studio responsible for shows like Air, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, Lucky Star, and K-ON is Kyoto Animation, and as you might have guessed, is located not too far out of my way in Kyoto. In Japan, it is common for students (including my own) to take school trips for a weekend or a few days to another major city in Japan. My own students typically go to Tokyo or Okinawa, but the girls from Lucky Star live in Tokyo, so they headed down to Kyoto.

Konata (the girl with the blue hair) is a huge Japanese animation fan, and as such the series is very meta. Making jokes about animation in animation. True to this theme, the first place Konata wants to go? Not to Gion with its geisha and maiko. Not to any of the amazing hundreds of years old temples. Nah, she goes straight to her favorite animation studio. I too visited the studio taking pictures in roughly the same places as the girls.





Fair winds and following seas.

Polo? Tennis? A Shirt For Both and More.

Current and vintage polos from Lacoste, Vineyard Vines, and Polo Ralph Lauren.
Mesh or interlock. Short sleeve or long, but usually short. Lacoste or Polo by Ralph Lauren, Fred Perry or Boast, or many others. It is a staple of the prep wardrobe. T-shirts? Sure we have those. Sometimes we even wear them. Normally, though, this shirt, designed by René Lacoste, the French 7-time Grand Slam tennis champion, is a go-to part for the oxymoronic styles of being casually put-together or nonchalantly go-to-hell.

Ironically, it has come to be known as the polo shirt in a very roundabout fashion. Even though it was somewhat related to shirts of a similar design used by various players of polo in the 1800s, there is no direct convergence between Lacoste's shirt and polo until much later. In 1856, John Brooks of Brooks Brothers brought over a design for a very different polo shirt. He had witnessed a polo match where players had worn what we now call Oxford Cloth Button Downs, which had been developed to keep shirt collars from flying up into polo players' faces. It was an instant hit, and it remains one for the prep set- just not for polo.

In 1920, Canadian-Argentinian polo payer Lewis L. Lacey produced a shirt that was almost the shirt we recognise today. It even had a polo player on the breast. In the 1923 season these shirts worn by the Hurlingham Polo Team were created and sold by Lacey to others. Similarly, Lacoste and other tennis players were typically used to playing in long-sleeved white button-up shirts (worn with the sleeves rolled up), flannel trousers, and ties. As you might imagine, Lacoste was not a fan of this and instead designed a shirt with an unstarched, flat, protruding collar, a buttoned placket, and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front (which sadly, Lacoste no longer has on their modern design). This design was adopted by a number of sports, leading to a version which would become the modern rugby shirt, and of course, by the 1950s, was adopted by polo players. At this point even tennis players called the shirt a polo shirt.

Fred Perry, famous English-American tennis player launched his own line (after perfecting the sweatband!) of tennis shirts. It is still a choice among some members of the prep set who consider Lacoste to be too showy or Ralph Lauren to be too inauthentic. Like another prep institution, J.PRESS, Fred Perry is now owned by a Japanese conglomerate. However, it was from the shirt's association with the game of polo, well after Lacey's version had already been used on and off, and Ralph Lauren launched his "Polo" line featuring a design very close to (and some say stolen directly from) Lacoste, that the shirt really became popular. Part of Lauren's 1972 line, it was an instant hit and has changed the fashion landscape forever. In 1973, Boast introduced their own version. Many say that Lauren's offerings are, regardless of heritage or legacy, the only design that "keeps it real." However, with the resurrection of Boast and new labels like Band of Outsiders, perhaps his dominance will be challenged in the future...


Polo by Polo Ralph lauren, slacks by Uniqlo, ribbon belt by Uniqlo, watch by Brooks Brothers, NATO strap by American Eagle Outfitters, shoes by Sperry Top-siders.

Fair winds and following seas.

Social Media Platforms: The Kyoto Maiko Rundown

Before I go any further I have two big announcements to make.

First I want to thank everyone who suffered through my 24 hour SOPA/PIPA post. Political posts are not, and never will be, a feature of this blog, but the language of those laws was terrible. Everyone across the political spectrum was against these bills, and the chilling effects it would have on bloggers needed to be shared. Thank you for your understanding. Such posts will occur only in the direst of circumstances.

Second, Sarah Vickers of Kiel James Patrick has just launched her own prep style blog Classy Girls Wear Pearls, which can be found on my blogroll. Please enjoy.


If there is one thing that I think brings my two "commenter groups" together in a single thread, it is my behavior posts on blogging. Maybe it's a bit meta to blog on blogging, but aside from a few Anonymouses (Anonymi? Anonymeese?), and non-blogger users like Bitsy, most of us are, ourselves, bloggers. And by virtue of this fact, our blogs interact in a wider blog community. We don't just have conversations on our own blogs, we have them across blogs, and across the internet. For that reason, I felt it would be important to go over how Kyoto Maiko (and I personally) uses the various social media platforms.

Blogger - Clearly this consists of my main blog. A combination of categories with outfit posts of myself and others, historical photos, travel photos, and of course, behavior/blog posts like this. Sometimes photos only, but usually very word heavy. This is the center of my blogging universe, and increasingly the center of my social media universe.

Tumblr - Posts on the blog are carefully crafted. Only the best photos of large sets are selected. Tumblr I see as a repository of all, or most, of the images I take. Showing my readers the raw material of how my image posts are constructed. I will sometimes post or reblog the content of others. But this is a rarity. The vast majority of content will be my own. The subtitle of my tumblr is "Often Original Content" and I mean it. I think using tumblr just to post photos you like is fine too, but it isn't for me.

Twitter - I love twitter. I use it mostly to connect to people I normally would never have the chance to. Yesterday I traded a few sentences about Reality TV with Lisa Birnbach of the The Original Preppy Handbook. Very mundane, but to think that it makes such mundane conversations seem possible with anyone you might wish to talk to is amazing. I also use it to post my own links to tell people when I have updates, and to follow the links of bloggers I don't normally follow or visit every day via blogger but might still care to read if a title jumps out at me. V of Grit & Glamour has spoken about this, and it is precisely how I decide when to jump in on her blog. If her tweet seems interesting to me- I go for it. However, @Kionon is my personal twitter, and sometimes that means political or religious comments that I would never allow on the blog itself. Ask the readers time, do you believe Kyoto Maiko needs its own twitter account to keep these separate?

Facebook - No. This is entirely a personal space for me. Not related to my blog. I have worked in politics, and this is how I keep track of friends, coworkers, and fraternity brothers. This is where I am extremely politically active, and have many heated debates about spirituality, religion, and politics. I would like to keep this entirely closed off from my blog, and I am worried that even a fan page might start to generate too much crossover.

Google+ - Use it pretty much like twitter at the moment, but don't use it nearly as much. I think it's really powerful, but I am not yet sure how to harness that power. Big problem is that some of my friends and fraternity brothers do not have Facebook, but do have Google+ and this means that even while I post blog content, I can get into heated debate with individuals. Twitter's format prevents this because of the character limit. Google+ does not. Unsure how to proceed.

Other services - I think at this point, much as V tweeted not too long ago, any other services would be too many to handle. Several people have asked me if I have an Instagram. I don't, and I probably don't want one.

So dear readers, how do you think Kyoto Maiko should be using social media, and how do you as bloggers or blog readers use social media? I am curious to know.

Fair winds and following seas.

Ivy League Style

For CC at Ivy Style.

Photographed at the Hankyuu Mens Store, Umeda, Osaka, Japan

The One That Got Away

When I left for Korea, I still owned a 323i Sport Sedan. I loved that car. Still do. I kept it for the six months I was in Korea, but when I moved to Japan, I figured it would be too difficult to maintain from 7000 miles away, and shipping it to Japan and keeping it within regulations (called shaken) was too cumbersome and too expensive. So, with a heavy heart, I said goodbye.




I have resolved one day to buy one just like it, when I'm not so flighty, and my career post-MA is settled. The PE teacher I work with in Fukuchiyama owns my car's twin, in silver. I was the only coworker allowed to drive it around town. That made the the sting hurt a little bit less...

Loss of a BMW... #preppyproblems