Do you know why the woman in this illustration looks as if someone is poking her with a red-hot iron? Do you see how she can barely bring herself to touch her skirt with her right hand? It's because the pockets on the skirt she is holding out so gingerly are FAKE.

Yep, that's right. FAKE. They're applied with transfers, like so:

Obviously, the woman in the background is sneering at the poor deluded woman in the foreground who thinks fake pockets are better than no pockets at all. If anything, fake pockets are worse …

Thanks to wundermary for the images!

Reader Lynn is looking for fiction that describes twentieth-century older women and their clothes, which reminded me of the wonderful descriptions of clothes (on women of all ages) in the novels of Kathleen Norris, like this one:

Only the wearers and their dress-makers knew what hours had been spent upon these costumes, what discouraged debates attended their making, what muscular agonies their fitting. Only they could have estimated, and they never did estimate — the time lost over pattern books, the nervous strain of placing this bit of spangled net or that square inch of lace, the hurried trips downtown for samples and linings, for fringes and embroideries and braids and ribbons. The gown that she wore to her own dinner, Mrs. White had fitted in the Maison Dernier Mot, in Paris; — it was an enchanting frock of embroidered white illusion, over pink illusion, over black illusion, under a short heavy tunic of silver spangles and threads. The yoke was of wonderful old lace, and there was a girdle of heavy pink cords, and silver clasps, to match the aigrette that was held by pink and silver cords in Mrs. White's beautifully arranged hair.

Mrs. Burgoyne's gowns, or rather gown, for she wore exactly the same costume to ever dinner, could hardly have been more startling than Santa Paloma found it, had it gone to any unbecoming extreme. Yet it was the simplest of black summer silks, soft and full in the skirt, short-sleeved, and with a touch of lace at the square-cut neck. She arranged her hair in a becoming loose knot, and somehow managed to look noticeably lovely and distinguished, in the gay assemblies. To brighten the black gown she wore a rope of pearls, looped twice about her white throat, and hanging far below her waist; pearls, as Mrs. Adams remarked in discouragement later, that "just made you feel what's the use! She could wear a kitchen apron with those pearls if she wanted to, everyone would know she could afford cloth of gold and ermine!"

From The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne (review here; For a contemporary account of Kathleen Norris, look here).

Do you have a favorite author for descriptions of dress, especially descriptions of twentieth-century dress? (Georgette Heyer is great for Regency dress, at least to read — I have no idea how accurate her depictions are, but I'm sure someone will tell me!) Please leave your recommendations in the comments …

Cecelia sent this to me (because of the pockets, obviously) and isn't it just neato keen? It's a teen pattern, which makes me think that probably someone, somewhere, saw this dress made up and clucked over the ridiculous habits of "kids today," with their enormous pockets and their lack of respect for authority.

This illustration, all by itself, is the plot of a Hayley Mills movie, isn't it? About orphan teen bank robbers. They (both roles played by Ms. Mills) are on a two-girl crime spree (and hunted by the police and all the papers, who think that they are not teens, but master criminals, albeit of very short stature) until they are befriended by a kindly bank guard (played by Morgan Freeman) who inspires them to change their ways. Somebody make that for me, okay? Thanks.

Oh, and speaking of crazy kids, do y'all remember Rebecca (of course you do, she designed this) and Trish (of CraftyPlanet.com)? They're currently working on a book called "One Yard Wonders," and are looking for really cool projects that can be made with no more than a yard of fabric. More details are here.

Please submit projects because I have a LOT of one-yard leftovers that I would really like to use up …

I found this store completely by accident; I decided to walk down one side of the street rather than the other so as to stay in the shade, and, idly glancing through the shop windows, saw this:

Of course, agonizingly, the store wasn't open for another ten minutes. So I went and browsed through a children's clothes store across the street, afraid to roam further afield in case I lost my way and couldn't make it back. I did cleverly take this picture for directional reference (the shop is at the very corner of this street and the main Nippori drag):

When the shop finally did open (on the dot of 10 a.m., just as the sign said), I was the first one in the door — to look at this:

and this:

and this:

The gentleman who was running the store when I was there was very helpful — I asked permission to take these pictures, which was originally refused … until I whipped out my handy Dress A Day business cards, after which everything was copacetic. I tried to explain "blog", but since I often have a hard time explaining "blog" in English, my hand gestures were not up to the task. So when he said "Magazine?" I said "Yes, computer magazine," and left it at that.

I ended up buying three meters of this:

Here's the selvage:

I am thinking that some of these patterns are Japan-only … I haven't seen them anywhere else, not on Ebay.co.uk or on the new Liberty website. And it does say pretty clearly "Printed in Japan". Does anyone know for sure?

As Liberty goes, this wasn't hideously expensive — I think it was about 2900 yen/meter, so about $29. Cheaper than Liberty in the U.S., that's for sure — if you could even find it!

I accepted a business card but am unable to read it — am posting it here for any scanlation help:

This store is the one closest to the top edge of the card, on this little map (you can get your orientation from the train station). Worst-case, you could always print this image and give it to the hotel concierge or cab driver — that should get you to one of these stores!

Aside from Liberty, the store carried a lot of very high-end cottons — including that red and yellow French-provincial stuff that handbags are made from, whose name I always forget — and some wools and linens. I didn't spend a lot of time browsing other than among the Liberty, since I knew buying that piece of Liberty had already strained my fabric budget a bit …

While I was paying for my fabric, the clerk even offered me a piece of chocolate. This is my kind of fabric store, I tell you.

So, yes, I bought a little fabric in Japan. (I know you're all surprised by that.) Last Tuesday morning I went to Nippori Textile Town.

Small digression: I know it seems scary, the idea of running around a strange city, by yourself, not knowing a word of the language (okay, I can say "sugoy" which I *think* means "awesome!") — but, really: it's okay. It's exhilarating, even. When you're traveling somewhere familiar you don't notice even a tenth of what's going on, because you don't have to. But when everything's strange, everything is important, and you notice every detail. The colors matter, and the expressions on people's faces, and even the flow of the air around you — they're all clues as to where you are and what you should do. If traveling somewhere so different doesn't make you feel incredibly awake and alive, you're doing it wrong.

But: back to the fabric:

When you walk into Tomato in Nippori, the first thing you see is the half-wall of 100-yen fabrics, presided over by the winking Tomato. It's pretty crowded around that wall, as you might imagine. When I was there on a Tuesday morning, the crowd was split pretty evenly between younger, student-y looking women, and sweet-tiny-grandma-type women. (I was the only non-Japanese in the store that morning, as far as I could tell.)

There's a lot of other stuff on the first floor which I neglected to take pictures of; mostly linen-y things.

The second or third floor (I forget which) has silk:

Hilariously, each floor plays different music. The ground/first floor plays upbeat J-pop; the knits floor (which I also neglected to photograph) was playing some Justin Timberlake; but the silks floor was playing classic big-band jazz. Talk about setting the atmosphere!

I spent most of my time (and money) on the cotton-prints floor:

You have to pay for your purchases on each floor separately. It seemed to me as if they did take credit cards, but I had brought a lot of cash with me, so I used that, instead. (I like to leave a country with less than $20 of that country's currency on me. My bureau drawer is not an effective foreign-currency hedge.)

One nice touch was the display of completed projects and patterns that lined the stairwells and landings at each floor:

The store staff were very friendly, and, even though (as I said) I don't speak any Japanese, I managed to get by just fine with hand gestures and lots of smiling — even when I was trying to express tricky things like "I want all that's left on this bolt, please." (However, if you need more than ten fingers to express how many meters you want, I'm not sure I can help you — although I'm really impressed!)

So enough of the travelogue: what did I buy?

I finally found the elusive orange bandanna print; I think this was 300 yen/meter:

And some brown/red/teal heavier cotton, which will almost certainly become a skirt:

Some black floral/dot fabric, which is probably going to be a Duro Jr.:

And this orange leaf-and-stripe fabric, which is also going to be a Duro Jr. (Sorry, I'm obsessed.):

Lastly, I picked up about 8 meters of this stripey fabric for my friend Jilli, aka the "Lady of the Manners" at Gothic Charm School. Wondering why anyone would need 8 meters of black and white striped fabric? Go check out that site and not only will you know, you'll want some for yourself …

Tomorrow: directions and photographs of the store in Nippori that sells LIBERTY.