I must confess that on my recent trip to Japan I didn’t expect to see many plus size women (entirely because of my pre-conceived ideas), but I was wrong! Not only did I see lots of awesomely dressed curvy women on the street, but it also turns out there are fashion magazines and sewing books for plus sizes, too. Of course, I snapped them up because Japan does sewing and fashion so well, and I’d never seen plus size Japanese patterns before. Before I delve into what I found, I apologize in advance: I don’t speak Japanese or have an in-depth knowledge of Japanese culture, so if I get anything wrong here, I’m sorry! I’m sharing what I saw but I’m sure I may have misinterpreted some things. Do please bring me up to speed in the comments, as I’d love to learn more.
First up, I bought the Pocchari Girls Sewing Book (available on Amazon and Etsy).
Yoshimi told me that that “pocchari” roughly translates to “chubby” (with a nice tone), and the book has patterns from L (bust 98cm, waist 76cm, hip 100cm) to 5L (bust 122cm, waist 100cm, hip 124cm), which is a Big 4 size 24/26 (the first line on the table below is height).
There are 17 patterns in the book: 6 tops, 4 dresses, 2 pants, 2 coats and 2 “combinations” (jumpsuits!). At first glance they do tend towards the boxy/tent-like, however, this is a pretty common style in Japanese fashion, which I think they’re reflecting rather than “curvy women should cover up”.
The patterns are pretty cool, but I totally fell in love with the styling! How awesome do these women look?! Very awesome, that’s what.
At the back, there are nested traceable full-scale patterns, rather like BurdaStyle. I’m afraid I don’t know if seam allowance is included – can anyone read that and tell? Luckily the illustrations are comprehensive so I think if you’ve made this type of garment before you’d be fine with construction.
Next, we have “La Farfa“, a plus size pattern magazine which has been written about in the Japanese Times as well as Buzzfeed. It’s a body-positive magazine with an incredibly upbeat vibe and a huge selection of plus size fashion on view, albeit mostly for young women.
There are some unusual parts, like one section where the height and weight of the models is printed, rubenesque horoscope illustrations, and also some slightly un-politically-correct graphics of animals bursting out of their clothes…
It features real street-style fashion, and the edition I picked up has a plus-size pop idol group on the front.
I was so cheered to see both the sewing book and the magazine, and I’m sure there’s more out there that I wasn’t even aware of.
Have you ever made patterns from a Japanese sewing book? Any advice would be welcome!
Love yourself first!!!
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I’m going to be the dissenting voice here. I’m sorry, but I do NOT ever, EVER want to look like a tartan tea tent at a Highland gathering. While some people will be able to carry it off, most people won’t.
Thanks for posting! I have such a crush on Japanese fashion, but I also always thought it was only geared towards misses sizes (or smaller!). It’s great to see an emergence of plus sized fashion, and especially that mention of the positive body image magazine for young girls. I think young girls in EVERY country need magazines like that!
And thanks to all the previous comments with the links to other pattern sites
I loved this post, Jenny!
I’m so excited to read this post. I’m a HUGE fan of both “Lagenlook” and Japanese clothing design. The most well known school of fashion design in Japan is called the Bunka School and they have many publications, including quite a lot in english. Try this link for some publications translated to english – http://www.tuttlepublishing.com. I put “japanese sewing fashion” into the searchbox and found 6+ books. Some favorites I’d recommend are – “Basic Black”, “Drape, Drape 1” and 2, “Pattern Magic for Stretch Fabrics”.
I’m an aspiring designer myself and all my concepts for designing clothing for full figured women are influenced by lagenlook/bunka. I often feel frustrated by the opinion of some curvy women that clothing which is loose or draped is intended to “cover up”. As if this is some sort of disrespectful judgement that they have to oppose and reject. I don’t design figure hugging clothing because its my opinion that clothing that moves on the body (rather than bodies that bulge inside too close fitting garments) and allows minimally restricted (i.e. as opposed to a tight skirt waistband) freedom of movement is not only respectful to our physical comfort – but more significantly – IT LOOKS GOOD TOO! Clothing for full figured women can be well designed with excellent design features and flatter the body shape and also be practical. The clothing that suits slender female body shapes doesn’t always upscale well for women that don’t have pinched in waists or long shapely legs….
Actually, as you can see I’m waxing quite passionate on this topic – I think I need to write a dedicated blog post for Curvy Collective!
Meantime – http://www.pearlredmoon.com and a link to my pattern shop is on the right hand side bar. Or to direct – boho-banjo-art-to-wear.myshopify.com
Pearl Red Moon
Murrurundi, Australia
This blog may help for translations. It’s geared towards the lolita fashion style, but for sewing I imagine a number of the terms are going to be the same.
https://misscarolbelle.wordpress.com/
I’ve loved Japanese sewing books for a long time, but don’t have any because I don’t know anyone who can translate. : Not to mention, they’re all too small for me – but these might not be.
The look is very 80s androgynous – like Boy George and Alison Moyet and Andy Bell, I love it.
Alison Moyet! Thank you for that! (You have made my soundtrack for the day!)
I have a love affair with those books. The clothes are all too small for me, so I have to trace off/size up/muslin and rebuild which is about one too many steps to make the patterns worthwhile (Drape Drape, you hurt me). Pattern Magic bits show up all over in my sewing, as do other inspirations, and right now I’m pouring over Drama Rakuten Ichiba (ISBN：9784579113200) that I picked up at Kinokuniya in Seattle (they shrunk their craft book section! Booooo!).
I do not read a word of Japanese, despite years of trying, but the diagrams are so good, the words are useless. This has become my goal as a pattern maker, and I absorb those lessons as often as I can. So I do “read” them all.
Wow, thankyou for showing us your finds – the Farfa models are the cutest girls I’ve ever seen!
Very cool! And yeah, I do love the styling in these. I was about a US RTW size 12 when I went to Japan (in 2000), and I remember feeling huge there at the time, so I’m really pleasantly surprised to see that these books/magazines are now available. I’m always admiring the things that people are making from the Drape Drape books–I’d love to see them publish a Drape Drape book aimed at larger sizes.
I definitely felt kind of enormous, but on the other hand I stood out for so many different reasons, I decided to just embrace my alienness!
My (male) cousin is a redheaded, bearded, very curvy man and he lives there. If he can make it there…. (he actually is a sought after (paid) party guest for his alien mess! )
I made a dress from one of the Drape Drape books. But it was a translated version. The hardest part was tracing off the pattern. 🙂
I have one of the books but it’s so intimidating! I feel like a grounding in origami would probably help!
This is the best! Some of these would look great in my “too good to cut” Nani Iro. I’d also love to see how Japanese home sewers make the most of their space.
Nani Iro would of course be perfect 🙂
Did you find any clothes in stores that you could fit? I was 20lbs lighter than I am now when I lived there, and I sized out of 95% of the clothing (unless I work supposed-to-be-loose tops as tight tops). There are plus size sections in department stores though, usually hidden in dark corners and labelled either “Queen” size or just the kanji for BIG. Catalogues are popular in Japan though, so I always assumed that people my size or bigger must be buying catalogue stuff – otherwise they’d go naked with the tiny selection! It’s great that things have changed a bit in the 5 years since then, and I’m pleased that there are some plus size options for sewists now! 🙂
To be honest, I didn’t even look – I was distracted by all the fabric! But the fashion magazine seems to strongly suggest there’s lots of options available
To be honest I didn’t actually look because the fabric distracted me 🙂 But I assume that all the outfits in the plus size magazine are available for sale in Japan, and it looked like they had a lot of really cute stuff!
I don’t know if you need it. But, I do have a few pages scanned of English translations of the markings on the pattern. It might be helpful. It’s mostly geared to drafting when there are no directions. But, they are great. When you were at Bunka, did you see / notice if they are still producing their textbooks in English?
I didn’t see any, I have to say, but I also wasn’t looking!
have you come across this website? http://www.japanesesewingbooks.com/2013/10/04/using-japanese-sewing-books/ I know when I used the Sew Chic Kids book (which was translated into English) it showed on the cutting layout which seams to add allowances too.
Interesting, I’ll check it out!
So cool! Thanks for sharing. I’d be in the same camp you were– I wouldn’t expect to see very many plus-sized women or curvy-friendly magazines and/or sewing books. My friend is a Japanese teacher and spent 2 years living in Japan and I’m sure she’d be happy to translate. I’m not sure if she sews, but she might and think she has at least a general knowledge of sewing terminology and should be able to help out. I will send her the link to your fabulous post. Thanks again!
Thanks Candy! I’ll let you know if I need help 🙂