Taiwan introduces the future of cartography: nationwide school uniform maps

Despite being a made famous by thousands of Japanese TV shows and comics, cute “sailor suit” uniforms and their ilk are not limited to schools in Japan alone. As we’ve seen before, high schools all across Asia kit their female students out with a variety of stylish getups, with the girls themselves often making their own modifications, usually quite aware that they are wearing outfits that millions of people across the world think are cute or just plain sexy.

But it appears that Japan’s reign as the school uniform capital of the world may soon be over. Bringing fashion and cartography together at last, a specially designed map of Taiwan which provides photos of the school uniforms the girls in each particular area are rocking has become a big hit online this week.

It’s certainly unorthodox, but we have to say a map of school uniforms makes a welcome change from information about elevation and public weighbridges.

Representing more than 200 public, private and vocational high schools, the map provides snaps of young ladies dressed in the uniforms worn in each particular area. While we struggle to believe that all of the girls modelling the outfits are genuine high schoolers, in fairness to the site it makes no such claims, and focuses entirely on documenting the uniforms themselves. There just happen to be girls who look like models wearing some of them…

Loading up the site, users are able to zoom in on whichever part of the country they wish, and can click on any of the pink flags that represent schools in that area.

A click and a couple of seconds of loading later, and a school name appears, along with a sample image of the kind of uniform worn by the female students there.

From big cities like Taipei to tiny coastal towns, the country’s cute outfits are displayed in all their glory. The mind boggles, though, when we consider why someone would take the time to compile a collection of photos like these and integrate them into a map. Could it be that they just really dig fashion? Or, perhaps, someone out there simply enjoys looking at cute girls in school uniform?