Saturday, July 11, 2015

Old Habits Die Hard: Nylon in Thailand



For years I spent one Saturday afternoon per month at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Costa Mesa, California reading the latest issue of Nylon Japan. I had a subscription through my local Kinokuniya store, so the magazine was shipped directly form Japan to my local bookstore. When I moved to Portland I resumed my subscription with Kinokuniya in Beaverton, OR, and took up reading the magazine at Insomnia Café nearby.

When I lived in Japan, even in the rural mountains of Shimane, I would drive 40 minutes to Oda city and pick up the magazine at a “Just Books” store, then I usually preferred to read it at Starbucks in Hiroshima, specifically the one in Hondori, where the view from the second-floor window provided a great show of the fashionable shoppers on the streets below.

Now I am here in Chiang Mai, where I have picked up a copy of Nylon Thailand, and am enjoying reading it in the shaded patio of Impresso, one of Nimman’s many fashionable cafes. As I thumb through the glossy pages, I am struck by how location –specific the magazine is. I always loved Nylon Japan more than Nylon America because of it’s specific focus on Japanese brands and designers, Japanese photoshoots, and Japanese style and travel. In the Thailand issue, I am seeing similar signs of cultural specificity. One fashion photoshoot features EST, a Thai brand of soda. Another photoshoot features styles that I have only seem on the streets of Bangkok. A short travel guide has a series on fashionable places in Chiang Mai, very fitting, considering that I am here right now. Well, it’s looks like I’ve got my schedule figured out for tomorrow.





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