Traditional Japanese construction worker clothes are called tobi shouzoku. The men and women who put up Japan’s buildings have been getting a lot more fashionable recently if these catalogs from a clothing company in Okayama Prefecture called Kaseyama (site is Japanese only) are any indication.
Cherry blossoms!
The baggy pants are called nikka-pokka-. The reason that construction workers wear them is that the loose fit allows them to stretch their legs out comfortably when climbing around on buildings. Some construction workers also consider them to make their jobs safer. The baggy pants tend to get caught on things, making them more careful when they are working in high places.
All these clothes are being modeled by real construction workers, and I read that you can see these clothes on construction sites, but it’s kind of hard to imagine. If anyone out there has a picture of someone wearing this kind of stuff on the job, I’d love to see it.
Regular tobu shouzoku run around 6,000-8,000 for the pants and 4,000 to 7,000 yen for the tops, but these high fashion ones seem to be around 30,000 or more.
April 5, 2010 at 11:46 pm
I still don’t get the idea of baggy work pants.
April 6, 2010 at 6:29 am
These are awesome, and remind me of my great-grandpa’s Edwardian “mustache cup,” which is covered in gold leaf and flowers–and was quite manly in its time. It’s all such a construct, anyway. :)
April 6, 2010 at 10:46 am
The baggy pants look sort of like hakama.
April 7, 2010 at 4:47 am
Oh my goodness. Men wearing flowers…Pfft…Sorry! I do like the bottom two though.
April 12, 2010 at 1:39 am
Lol! I’ll bet most women after seeing this would stop fantasizing about construction workers.
April 14, 2010 at 1:29 am
…thereby proving that ANYTHING can be done in Fine Style.
April 14, 2010 at 2:23 am
A friend of mine bought one of these. She’s French and used to say that the construction workers in Japans were the most fashionable blue collar in the world. Not blue collar anymore…
April 14, 2010 at 3:15 am
Too beautiful to wear at work!! :)
April 14, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Awesome. Better than them wearing skirts and pantaloons.
April 26, 2010 at 12:16 pm
HA!!!! These are FANTASTIC!!!
Love the serious look on their faces!!!!! I cannot imagine walking around England wearing something like that. You’d get lynched!!!!!
http://www.t-shitsu.com – AWESOME t-shirts designed FOR foreigners in Japan!!! – Fancy a link exchange?!
April 29, 2010 at 5:01 am
damn, I’d like to get my hands on some of those for the store!! I have no idea who’d go for it, but it’s so Japanese in the oddest way, I LOVE IT!
May 3, 2010 at 6:13 am
thank you wery much
May 19, 2010 at 5:06 am
the baggy pants is just fashion – new workers wear regular straight style ones. Bit like the pontan I wore at high school, it looks cool, thats all.
August 16, 2011 at 2:59 pm
The baggy pants are called nikka-pokka-. The reason that construction workers wear them is that the loose fit allows them to stretch their legs out comfortably when climbing around on buildings. Some construction workers also consider them to make their jobs safer. The baggy pants tend to get caught on things, making them more careful when they are working in high places.The baggy pants free and comfortable…………….
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Steven