Styles good enough to eat
Japan’s designers launch brands for tasteful wearable treats.
CAKES, cookies, macarons ... all kinds of yummy-looking sweets are on a plate – but they’re not edible. They are all accessories.
Accessories brands that specialise in designs featuring decorative sweets have been launching one after another in Japan recently.
Q-pot was established in 2002, releasing rings adorned with ganache-like nama-choco forms instead of gemstones, and keychains featuring cookie-like objects.
Q-pot designer Tadaaki Wakamatsu loves sweets. “I wanted to make products that make people smile. They pick them up and say, ‘What’s this!?’ This kind of thing can be a good conversation starter,” he says. A brand named Chimaski focuses on Japanese sweets and snacks. It makes accessories that resemble popular snacks such as arare rice crackers and kaki-no-tane rice snacks, which are shaped like persimmon seeds.
Some brands even make accessories using real food. Rotari Parker coats real snacks such as pretzels and pies with resin and uses them to create necklaces and brooches.
Rotari Parker designer Rie Hirota says: “I began making them when I received handmade cookies from my friend and wanted to keep them as my lucky charm.”
Sweets accessories are popular among women in their 20s and 30s.
Those who like to make sweets accessories sell their works at exhibition spaces every year.
But why use sweets, and not jewels?
Since ancient times, gold, silver and precious stones have been used extravagantly for accessories to show off the power and wealth of the wearers.
After the 1920s, this trend changed gradually. Chanel, for example, released accessories using fake jewels, making gorgeous accessories and fashion more accessible to everyone.
Accessories in the shape of sweets are sure to bring joy to many people and bring back fond childhood memories.
It’s probably similar to the comfort and energy boost we get from sweets when we’re feeling tired. – Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network