Accessories: tokidoki.it

I met Simone Legno (sic?) in Tokyo in 2002 and he seemed like a complete dork at the time. He's Italian, and at the time his sense of style amazed me. I'm from Seattle, though, which has a terrible reputation for style, even as far as the US goes. Anyway, his art was kind of cute Hello Kitty meets Kirby's Dreamland meets Kill Bill sort of way, but I would never guess that would launch him any sort of respectable career, especially considering much of it was quite sexual in nature (see the image below). The tokidoki (which means 'sometimes' in Japanese btw) style does stem from the same root as the Kill Bill/Western, neo-japonesque style, which is hard for me to describe precisely.


Fast forward to 2006, I was walking from Omottesando to Harajuku and lo and behold! I see a massive display on the side of a store showing tokidoki gear! Apparently, Simone has made it and is now designing purses and hand bags for LeSportSac. (Me? I'm writting this blog and working for a clothing company no one's ever heard of.)

Now the gear in the shop really is geared towards teenage girls, asian fetishists and general Japanophiles, which means no man should buy it to wear himself, but some girls like this style, and they have birthdays.