I have this thing that I like to do, which is to identify the brands people are wearing out on the street. “That girl is carrying a Hereu bag” whispers the voice in my head. Or “I know she’s wearing a SIMKHAI dress.” Slightly obnoxious, yes, but at least it stays between me and my brain. This exercise gets a little trickier when I’m abroad. I just got back from a two-week trip in the motherland, Japan, and while there were some familiar labels in the mix, many of the tops, skirts, and dresses that caught my eye remain unidentified.

Still, it was interesting to see what kind of styles the Japanese people gravitate towards. I’ve been going back and forth to Tokyo since I was born, and have always known its people to be a very fashionable group. In fact, my first entry to fashion were those thick, glitzy Japanese magazines, whose pages made me believe I’d wear leg warmers and frilly skirts all my life. It was through those magazines that I felt my first jolt of excitement towards fashion. Now, some twenty-or-so years later, fashion in Japan remains as influential as it ever was.

What you see people wear in Japan is quite different from the Western world. Knowing how reserved people typically are in Japan, I refrained from running up to them and asking “hey what are you wearing?”. Instead, I made it a point to check all the labels hanging on the racks at department stores. Brands like Róhe, Toteme, Auralee, and Sacai stood out to me — a mix of contemporary western brands and classic Japanese minimalist ones. As a more conservative country, its people find unique ways to bring fashion forward without showing too much skin. Your strappy dress gets a T-shirt underlay, your heels are max two-inches high, and skinny jeans are absolutely nowhere to be seen (although I spotted quite a few low-rise, flared jeans). Instead, you’ll find plenty of pieces that hint at the figure underneath, rather than reveal it through form-hugging or shoulder-bearing clothes.

I love the subtlety of it all – the artistic eye it takes to create something beautiful through clothes, rather than body. Below, I collected a number of styles I frequently saw on Tokyo’s most stylish group. Perhaps they can serve as a little inspiration, should you be planning a trip there soon.