Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo is the first public-private joint fashion initiative. A total of 52 brands are participating in the collections held at two tents set up especially for the event in the outer gardens of Meiji Jingu shrine.
Source: Japan Today.
I am completely unexcited by this. I don’t know why, but I expected the Japanese Fashion Week to be jaw-droppingly….japanese. But instead it looks like any other fashion week around the world. Everything from the models to the clothes themselves. It seems like the Japan wants to amalgamate with the West, rather than showcase their insane, decorative, beautiful fashions that the country has been famous for, for centuries.
What a shame.
A side fact: the Fashion Week will be held biannually from now on, every Autumn and Spring.
Yves covered the ganguro style in a post a while back but I felt the need to post about it myself because it’s something that….puzzles me.
It is supposed to recreate a Californian Beach Girl look but to me it always seemed like these girls were trying to cosplay Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. In drag.
Appropriate, given that ganguro literally means “face-black”.
But wait, it gets more frightening. Apparently, one can go further than the ganguro look to the yamanba look. It roughly translates as “mountain hag” or “mountain witch” and the look can be attained by simply adding a few strokes of white lipstick or white eyeliner to your current ganguro style. Quite a lot of white eyeliner, really. Silver hair makes a nice touch too.
But still, the ultimate question remains:
Ganguro….why?
Link:
http://www.livemusicstudio.com/mac/pages/ganguro.html – Good photos and text
Ganguro girls don’t care what you think!
Yamanba style. Scary.
Shoichi Aoki is one very cool 55 year old. I wrote about his magazine FRUiTS yesterday, but he has two other magazines that he publishes monthly.
STREET magazine again follows street fashion, but from the major cities around the world. It was started by Aoki in 1985 in London, and is still going strong today. It’s fair to say that STREET magazine helped introduce street fashion to the Japanese youth.
The cities he visits each issue are printed on the cover, and it is available by subscription (or you can order back issues) from the website.
http://www.street-mg.com
TUNE magazine is a mere 10 issues old. It is based once more in Japan and can almost be seen as a male version of FRUiTS (which isn’t entirely true since plenty of males appear in FRUiTS). The photos aren’t necessarily limited to Harajuku either, the spiritual home of FRUiTS. Nevertheless, if you like your street fashions to be a bit grittier and masculine, TUNE is for you.
Back issues and subscriptions are available again from his website: http://www.street-mg.com
While thse two magazines aren’t as famous as FRUiTS, they are very interesting to read to see where Aoki has come from (STREET) and where he’s going (TUNE).
FRUiTS is a monthly magazine published by photographer Shoichi Aoki in Japan. It started in 1997 after Aoki noticed a new trend in fashion among young people in Harajuku. Instead of a fashion trend that was dictated by designers, this was a trend started by the young people themselves.
Young people would mix traditional Japanese clothing such as kimonos or geta sandals, with Western or local Japanese designs, even with punk clothing. These people were not brand obsessed like most Japanese people are known to be. They developed a “Harajuku Free Style” fashion trend which Aoki wanted to document in FRUiTS.
Since the trend began in the mid-nineties, the street style has expanded to cover many sub-genres, like punk, Decorer, Gothic Lolita or just kawaii.
The trend has died down in recent years – probably due to the fact that Omotesando (the main street in Harajuku) isn’t closed to cars on Sundays anymore, so the FRUiTS kids no longer have anywhere to hang out. Aoki still manages to publish a magazine each month though, especially since the magazine has achieved cult status in both Japan and overseas.
FRUiTS is a great look into the minds and fashions of Harajuku youth and is available by subscription, or in two volumes of books from Phaidon Press.
Links:
The official website
Buy the first FRUiTS book from Amazon and support 3yen.com!
Buy the second FRUiTS book from Amazon and support 3yen.com!
Ganguro, (ガン黒) literally “face-black,” is a fashion trend among Japanese girls, an outgrowth of chapatsu hair dyeing. The basic look is bleached-blond hair and a deep tan, produced by tanning beds or makeup. The intent is to produce the tanned, blond California beach girl look. Accessories include high platform shoes or boots, purikura photo stickers, and cellular phones.
The Shibuya and Ikebukuro districts of Tokyo are the center of ganguro fashion. It goes against the grain of the usual Japanese standard of female beauty, which calls for skin as white as possible. The roots of the trend are said to be in the mid-1990s, starting with a popular tanned Okinawan singer named Amuro Namie and black British fashion model Naomi Campbell.
Some sources say that the “gan” syllable in ganguro is actually from the term “gan-gan”, a vulgar emphasis word somewhat like the British use of “bloody.”
Ganguro taken to the next level is called yamanba. The Gothic lolita style can be seen as a counter-reaction to ganguro style.
(Source: Wikipedia)
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