Kyoto Fashion Show

This is late but... Two weekends ago my friend Miho, who likes to dress in kimono and go places, drug me out to this kimono fashion show at Kyoto Eki. The first group to come out was hideous. All of the clothes looked like someone had stolen their grandmother's drapes and hastily affixed them to her couch covers and then laced them with gold jewelry. The designer, an uncomfortably comfortable man in a black cowboy hat, was also a model. He sported man-capes. It was terrible. Second to go were these really cute chicks in Yukata. I don't know if someone coached them on their walking but they were doing this odd geta bounce that was, dare I say, pretty f'n hot. Some very elegant kimono followed but I pined for the yukata girls and didn't take much interest. The whole affair was hosted by this skanky looking lady in paisely hot pants who I was assured many times was "very famous in Kansai." I grew tired of looking at her skinny kneecaps, with their folds of soft fat overlapping from above.
The first show ended. The audience had been made up of rancid looking old women who were there because, "old ladies like kimono and things that are free.". We had front row seats because Miho and her friend were wearing kimono. I was a foreigner with a camera so maybe someone thought I was important. The rancid old women started to be replaced by nicer looking young women in an assortment of clothing ranging from 'nice but weird' to 'hootchie.' I soon realized it was because the second show (by the way, if you don't live in Japan, you have to figure this stuff out as it goes because no Japanese person will ever think to explain what is happening or is going to happen to you) featured ladies who work in the clothing stores below the station as models, and was hosted by this dude, who is not funny in the least. I should also point out that this show was taking place at the bottom of the giant stairwell in Kyoto Eki so anyone who gathered to watch was looming over us in our small grouping of chairs and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the only foreigner in the front row with a camera and two girls in kimono. At the end of Ueda Ken's not funny show, during which photography was prohibited and young staff members would charge up the staircase throwing their hands out in front of anyone who lifted a phone-how degrading for them, a raffle was help in which you could win the outfits that the models were wearing. When they called your number you had to go stand on the stage with the model whose clothes you wanted. I had wisely chosen not to get a ticket. The first person to win was a little girl and she went straight for the model in the god-awful pink overall hotpants/ Mickey Mouse hat ensemble. Go figure; a child chooses a cartoon character. Two guys had their numbers drawn and they were really creepy and wore sunglasses and made the models uncomfortable. I think it would have been a good event for Susan because she would have hated all of the clothes and still really wanted to win. Miho proved that we have very different taste in fashion as all of her choices disappeared and then she finally didn't win anything. I wished Kumar was around so we could try to pick up models the way we had with the Miss Miyazaki ladies after the Erekkochya Matsuri. Instead I drank coffee with chicks in kimono. Bought a stupid playstation game and went home.