the joys of delayed gratification
the joys of delayed gratification
as a child of the instant grat generation, the wait times of japanese ebay proxy purchasing has changed my relationship with shopping for the better.
Good morning!
Phew—after the canal street piece, my brain needed a long rest and reset. For the academics and professors here, how do you guys do it?!! I’m in awe. Thank you to everyone who engaged with the piece and chimed in with comments and article links, I’m slowly reading through everything!
This evening I made a big pot of beef bolognese with rigatoni for dinner, and now I’m eating berkeley bowl nutella with a spoon, cross-legged at my desk with the ambient glow of my wooj lamp to my left…perfect writing conditions if you ask me.
Today I’m talking about:
my best recent finds on japanese ebay, including my first issey miyake piece and other designers to know
how the delayed gratification of international proxy shipping has influenced the way i shop secondhand (feels pertinent given the recent croissant discourse/state of Big Resale where the line between buying new vs. used is vanishing). it’s kind of like..microdosing the pre-order model, but for secondhand clothing.
Due to the nature of international proxy buying and shipping, there’s always a several week waiting period between the purchase and when it arrives at your door. Thus, it really amps up the anticipation of the unboxing.
I include links to exact/similar items for everything mentioned below.
1.) my first issey miyake piece
Let me preface. Like many of the Japanese avant-garde designers, I relate to Issey Miyake’s work more from a place of abstract admiration than actually wearing the pieces. I love the ideas that he explored through clothing, the way he played with the form and movement of the human body through fabric. His approach to garment construction really defies the standards of Western pattern-making, which tends to follow the curvature of an idealized body shape (an aesthetic philosophy that goes far back, think of the “wet” draping of Hellenic sculptures that accentuate the male/female nude).