Nippori Fabric Town – Pictures & Video

Nippori is a Tokyo neighborhood only six Yamanote Line stops from Tokyo Station in one direction and six stops from Ikebukuro in the other. Regardless of its prime location, you aren’t likely to see fashion magazines or websites posting up Nippori Street Snaps anytime soon. Nippori street fashion is decidedly weighted toward office wear and “normal” clothes that you might see in any suburb in the world. The area is best known to tourists for its abundance of Buddhist shrines and traditional cemeteries. But for fashion designers, seamstresses, tailors, clothing creators, and anyone into crafts or DIY, Nippori is one of the coolest places in all of Japan. Why? Three words – Nippori Fabric Town!

Nippori Fabric Town (sometimes called Nippori Textile Town or Nippori Fabric Street) is THE place to go in Tokyo if you’re looking for fabric, leather, buttons, zippers, tassels, doilies, yarn, string, thread, ribbon, bows, or anything else related to making clothing. The people who frequent Nippori Fabric Town range from grandmother’s who make clothes for their grandchildren to hobbyists and those into crafts to students from Tokyo’s fashion colleges right on up to famous Japanese fashion designers and movie/television costume makers. If Akihabara is the center of Tokyo for computer geeks, then one might say Nippori Fabric Town is the center of Tokyo for fashion-creating geeks (and we only use the word “geek” in the most respectful way).

Eventually, we would love to share an in-depth report on a few of the important shops located in Nippori Fabric Town. For now, we will introduce Nippori Fabric Town with a quick overview of the entire area. Kaila spent several hours in Nippori this week shooting pictures and video of anything and everything that she found interesting. Check out her short video and 100 of her high-resolution photos below.

While visiting Nippori Fabric Town, Kaila also stumbled upon a cool exhibition created by the “Happy Toy Project”. You can see their Christmas tree and cute handmade toys in the first few pictures below. The stated mission of the project is “Let’s send these handmade dolls to children all over the world!” If you’re interested in finding out more about the organization, please check the Happy Toy Project website (in English & Japanese).

Nippori Fabric Town Video

Nippori Fabric Town Pictures

Click any of the Nippori Fabric Town pictures to see them in high resolution.

Photos & Video by Kaila.
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About the photographer/filmmaker:
Kaila is currently a Japanese language student in Bunka Fashion College’s sister school — Bunka Institute of Language. She loves taking photographs, getting lost in her own world and discovering new places with her fisheye, making accessories out of boredom and blogging whatever goes in her Japan life.