F is for Fashion Faux Pas

After another week of trying to work miracles at Kanokita Junior High, I looked forward to a relaxing Friday night playing basketball. Then my keitai rang. Could I make a 5:30 p.m. audition for a fashion show to be held next week? The 3:06 p.m. Yoyogi-uehara-bound train was pulling up to the platform, and I was still an hour’s commute from home. Time was short, and my sacred basketball schedule would be compromised. “See you there,” I said as the doors shut.

I instantly regretted the decision upon seeing those who also had answered the call. For the first time in Japan, I felt short. Many in the crowd seemed to know one another, and joked in European accents. Some clutched “books” – a portfolio of professional pictures. Some had the same cover.

Oh great, were these the contract boys? Imported from Europe to be models in Japan, contract boys lived off the land, roaming from audition to audition and leaving threads for the amateurs to vie for. Smiling for a camera in the afternoon, partying at night, and raking in the ¥en. Sign me up.

I wouldn’t have paid them a second glance on the street. Mickey Mouse trucker hats, purple tank tops, designer jeans, and Italian accents spelled Eurotrash tourists to me. However, knowing that they were contract models, I sized up the competition. Their arms, legs, hair, and cheekbones were elongated. One could have been a stand-in for Jesus. It was just the physique that could make leopard print furs and big-buckled belts look fashionable.

Next to me stood a shorter Frenchman with a buzz cut to disguise his receding hairline. It wasn’t long before he asked me where my book was. He was freelance, too. “I would tell you this after the audition, but it doesn’t look very professional not to have one,” he offered. I wished him luck as he went into the dressing room.

“Jeffrey-san, your turn,” the man in charge said, holding snapshots the agency supplied him from when I had registered there in August. He looked up and laughed through his nose. Right about then I wished I were playing basketball instead.

The changing room and audition space were one in the same – dressing, undressing, photographing, and practicing catwalks. Measurements were called out like numbers at a bingo game. Torso, hips, inseam. Guys were stripping down to their briefs, and putting on whatever the Japanese assistants handed them, a hodgepodge of articles plucked from racks lining the walls.

In my bare essentials, I accepted a size XS red and grey vest. It wouldn’t have fit my students. I zipped it as best I could. Did I get a shirt to go underneath it? My assistant, Makoto, read my mind. I unzipped, and layered with an ill-fitting white t-shirt with maroon sleeves. I then poured myself into a pair of black jeans. My thighs protested. Only the top button of the fly closed. Fashion was painful. I slid on a blazer with sleeves covering my knuckles. I felt like a stuffed sausage.

Makoto added the garnish – a white diaphanous scarf that he tucked into the blazer. There was no time to lace up the oversized sneakers. I was pushed into the center of the room having the dexterity of someone in leg casts. My knees were locked while feet slipped out of the sneakers. I must have looked like Frankenstein taking a walk. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. A downright unfashionable Frankenstein at that.

Fashion isn't for the faint of heart, human or otherwise.