Thursday, July 31, 2008

One More Reason to Love Japan

Ah, Japan. Home of tempura, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hello Kitty, and all thing cute. Now we have one more reason to love Japan: the haramaki. Apparently, as I discovered while randomly stumbling craft blogs, the haramaki is a new fashion trend over in Japan, and one I think we should import over here to the good ol' U. S. of A. and use for our own purposes. It's also been called a belly warmer or a tummy warmer, which is rather descriptive of what it is. Basically it's a tube of fabric or knitted material that wraps around your stomach, waist, and hips to provide a little extra warmth and coverage. This can be especially useful since sometimes the only pants you can buy are of the low-rise variety (a fashion pet-peeve of mine). Here are some pictures of some cute haramaki I found online:







As you can see, there's a lot of potential for spicing up an outfit, providing color, adding modesty, or just adding texture to whatever you're wearing! I gotta get me one of those. It's been a bit frustrating, because I can't seem to find anywhere to buy them on the internet, but I did find a tutorial for how to make one on Planet June (a fun, crafty blog to visit in your free time). Go here to access that.

1 comments:

Jessica said...

Nice, I like the plaid one.