It’s that time of year, the sun is shining, and all is well. But, every silver-lining is carefully packaged inside a cloud, so in all likelihood,  the meteorological miracles you are enjoying have come with a side order of sunburns, pollen allergies, and a rousing bout of mosquito pin-cushionry.  Yet, all of the aforementioned is not enough to dissuade you from soaking up a little sun on a hillside or grassy knoll, or perhaps in a poorly lit city centre.

If you are choosing to engage in your ‘fun in the sun’ in the last location, then the following may be a problem: you may suddenly find yourself being approached by a man or woman with less than honourable intentions. So without further ado, you hightail it out of there and hide…in your clothing.

Now this may seem a little far fetched, but in Japan this in fact is a reality. Whilst in the Occident most individuals choose to take self-defense classes as prepartion for encounters with muggers or other miscreants, apparently in Japan such incidents cause less than desirable ’scenes’, and thus it is preferable to avoid this with some vending machine-based camoflauge.

The young designer Aya Tsukioka believes that this clothing will help protect individuals from being victims of crime, and of course from causing ’scenes’, though she concedes (rather paradoxically) that her disguises are relatively hard to operate under duress. One last amusing note, is that dear Miss Tsukioka has designed a range of childrenwear in the form of small adorable rucksacks which fold out into fire hydrants…Yet it seems that such a costume would be unlikely to fool a school bully and far more likely to fool a small canine….lose lose?