A Wardrobe in Transition — Rethinking it through World Cup Cycles — Vol. Ⅱ
A Wardrobe of Variables
"Fashion is a total art form — made of countless variables." That's what I wrote in Vol. I.
So. What exactly are these variables?
Let me try to list the elements that make up what we wear.
Climate
Body type and facial features
Lifestyle
Social role
Aesthetic sensibility
These are the ones that come to mind.
First, let's not forget one of clothing's most essential functions: temperature regulation. Dressing for the climate of wherever you live, at that particular time of year, matters more than anything. You cannot throw a leather biker jacket over a T-shirt in a Tokyo summer. That look works in Europe — where the air is dry and the evenings actually cool down — but not here. Not in this humidity.
"Flattering" or "unflattering" — this is what we're really talking about when we discuss body type and facial features. It's simply a question of how well a garment works with the specific proportions of your face and body. Take me, for example: I have a relatively short neck, a full bust, and a compact upper body — what's known in Japanese style diagnosis as "straight" bone structure. The moment I add ruffles or puff sleeves on top of all that, something goes very wrong.
Lifestyle is another factor that can't be ignored. No matter how well a blazer suits you, if your job doesn't require you to wear one every day, it's not exactly a wardrobe essential. And however beautifully a cotton shirt dress might look on you, if you hate ironing — or simply don't have the time or mental bandwidth for it — it's going to stay on the hanger. (Some of us find even a steam iron too much to ask.)
Social role plays a part too. Take a mother whose child attends a prestigious private school: her fashion priorities might centre on looking polished and appropriate — not too flashy, not too understated. Or consider a different scenario: no matter how much you love that worn-in, artfully distressed vintage Converse, wearing them to a refined hotel lounge as a grown woman is going to raise eyebrows. Though perhaps that's more of a dress-code issue…
Personal aesthetic sensibility matters too. Someone with highly attuned skin sensitivity might prioritise the quality of fabric above all else. Someone visually sensitive might find a clashing colour combination physically uncomfortable. Someone else might notice immediately when a trouser hem is even a centimetre too long or too short. Each person's aesthetic radar is tuned differently, and that shapes everything about how they dress.
And then there's the spirit of the times — which should never be overlooked.
There's absolutely no need to follow the collections from Paris and New York every season. Not unless you work in fashion. But there does seem to be a broader, slower rhythm — a shift in silhouette and overall proportion that moves in cycles of roughly three to five years. Ignore it for too long, and you risk drifting into "somehow dated" territory without quite knowing why.
All of these elements shift independently of each other. And when their individual changes overlap, a new kind of turbulence emerges. I think that turbulence — that "wave" — is often what's behind the feeling that fashion has become difficult.
As I've gotten older, and as the variables in my own life have started moving in bigger and less predictable ways, I sometimes find that fashion — something I loved so deeply as a child — feels genuinely hard.
Among all these variables, "body type and facial features" might be the one that troubles most women most acutely. Which is probably why body structure analysis, facial type diagnosis, and personal colour theory have become so popular. Everyone is looking for some kind of framework to help decode the variables and the turbulence.
In my own case: straight bone structure, soft elegant facial type, and autumn warm (yellow-based) personal colouring.
This particular combination produces what I can only describe as the "suits me too well" problem. Or more specifically: the absence of effortlessness.
If I were to put on a perfectly fitted blazer and tailored trousers, add heels, pull my hair back, and swipe on a warm brown lip colour — all the things I'm supposedly "meant" to wear — I would look unbearably put-together. Think: Showa-era screen goddess. Or, for those who know the reference, Okita Hitomi, the formidable superintendent from the Japanese drama Odoru Daisosasen — played by Maya Miki, the first female detective superintendent in the series.
In the Reiwa era, effortlessness is everything. The prevailing aesthetic is the effort that goes into looking effortless. Against that backdrop, the Okita look reads as stiff, dated — and for someone like me, born in the late 1970s and very much a child of the Showa era, it risks tipping into something that reads as simply... old.
So. "Flattering" is a starting point, not a destination.
This, I think, is where style diagnosis reaches its limits. And sometimes, the clothes we want to wear — or need to wear — aren't necessarily the ones we're told we should.
There's something else that's been quietly bothering me: the endlessly recurring feature that goes something like "The 10 Essential Pieces Every Woman in Her 40s and 50s Should Own." You've seen it. We all have.
The thing is, sharing a decade of birth is about all these women have in common. Lifestyles differ. Values differ. Categorising by age is convenient — but it's also rather blunt.
A forty-something mother of three who doesn't work outside the home and a forty-something woman navigating a demanding career while single — their essential wardrobes are going to look very different. And even among stay-at-home mothers of three in their forties, the woman who takes taxis everywhere and has household help is going to need very different shoes from the woman who cycles to school pick-up and supermarkets every day.
That said — there are things that do tend to unite a generation. Bodies change. The distribution of weight shifts. Skin tone and texture evolve, and the sharp white that used to work can suddenly look harsh. But some things become possible that weren't before: as the flesh around the collarbone softens and thins, you can open a shirt button or two more than you used to — and instead of looking too revealing, it simply looks easy and healthy.
Age is a variable, yes. But it's only one among many.
In the end, no style quiz, no generational "essentials" list can give you the answer. They're reference material at best.
So what's the answer?
You have to find your own formula — your own way of combining your own variables. I know this in my head. But the formula doesn't come with instructions. And without instructions, it's easy to get lost.
I spent the first months of this year turning all of this over in my mind, slowly working through my wardrobe, until suddenly it was spring. The World Cup year was beginning to make itself felt. And then, quite unexpectedly — an encounter.
A black three-piece that felt, somehow, like a clue.
Next time, I'll start with that story.
To be continued…
