Lolita fashion : an advanced form of kawaii?
Lolita fashion : an advanced form of ‘kawaii?’
Kumi Matsumaru
The Daily Yomiuri
JCB Hall in Suidobashi, Tokyo, was packed last month, mostly with women wearing clothes that were clearly out of the ordinary. Some of them were wearing skirts flaring wide from their hips, seemingly inflated by hidden devices called panniers. There also were those in frilly blouses and maidlike head accessories held in place by ribbons tied under their chins. Many of them wore platform shoes and dramatic hair arrangements to complete their look.
They gathered at the hall to see the Individual Fashion Expo IV, an event showing the latest autumn and winter collections of 23 designers and brands that are known for Gothic, Lolita, punk or Gosu-rori (Gothic Lolita) tastes.
The show started with the designs of Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Sitting in a swing that hung from the ceiling, the models showed fluffy Lolita dresses in snowy white and candy pink.
Alice And The Pirates made a sharp contrast to that girlish collection with a more edgy look in black, white and gold, shown to the sound of thumping music, before the latest dreamy, even toylike, Lolita collection of Angelic Pretty hit the catwalk. Clad entirely in pink, each model appeared onstage holding a bouquet, a flower basket, a stuffed animal or an umbrella to enhance her girlish image.
The event went on to present the works of 20 more brand names along with live performances by three visual-kei rock artists or groups, Kanon Wakeshima, Jealkb and Plastic Tree. Although punk and visual-kei rock fashion also was presented in the three-hour event, the flavor of Lolita seemed to be particularly strong throughout the it.
Women in the audience, dressed in similar Lolita looks, waved at the models or stared at them as if in a trance.
“We launched the annual event in 2005 as a way to provide a place where people who like the tastes of fashion can get together in their favorite style and enjoy a show,” said Hiroshi Moriyama, an official of Marui Group Co, which organised the event. “We have been expanding the scale of the event with the rising popularity in and greater demand for Lolita items, in particular.”
Moriyama said he feels Lolita and Gosu-rori fashion now rank with animation as Japan’s important cultural exports. “I feel so because of the strong foreign reaction to our English mail-order service and increasing foreign visitors, especially from Europe and the US West Coast, to our store that deals with such brands.”
According to Yusuke Tajima, editor-in-chief of Kera fashion magazine, which has a readership of about 120,000 among Lolita and Gosu-rori lovers, Gothic fashion, which enjoyed a worldwide boom about 10 years ago, was blended with Lolita tastes in Japan, bringing about Gosu-rori fashion. Meanwhile, he said, the Gothic look was getting mixed with cyber fashion in Europe and punk fashion in North America. “The genre of Lolita itself started to grow in Japan back in the 1980s. With the birth of the Gosu-rori category, Lolita attracted further attention, not only as a genre of fashion but also as lifestyle as a whole,” Tajima said, citing Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty as representative Lolita brands.
“Gosu-rori fashion with the taste of ‘kawaii’ (cuteness) must have shocked people in the West as it is clearly different from (earlier)Gothic fashion with its dark flavour,” Tajima said.
Moriyama added that Lolita fashion’s popularity is due to its pursuit of a narrowly focused taste, completed with great attention to detail, which goes against the grain of a time in which fashion generally is becoming more and more casual.
“What we design is not moderately kawaii or sweet but extremely kawaii or sweet Lolita fashion with the brand colour of pink,” Angelic Pretty designer Asuka told The Daily Yomiuri. “Thanks to our originality in working from patterns created by my codesigner, Maki, many of our customers like to coordinate with Angelic Pretty items from head to toe.”
Angelic Pretty opened its store 10 days ago at MaruiOne, in the fifth to eighth floor section of the Marui department store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, that is dedicated to Gothic, Lolita and other related fashion brands. On the opening day alone, the brand rang up sales of 3.5 million yen, when the average for such an occasion is less than 1 million yen, according to Moriyama.
Asuka, an avid Lolita fashionista herself, said she feels that showing their clothes at the Japan Expo in Paris for two consecutive years has made the popularity of Lolita fashion stronger in France, too. “We had a lot of Lolita women visitors. We also have been enjoying great support among US fans, too,” she said.
To cater to foreign customers, Angelic Pretty launched an English-language mail-order service earlier this year. In November, the brand will also hold a two-day event in San Francisco to entertain customers there with a tea party and fashion show.
Asuka stressed that Lolita fashion is something that originated in Japan. “It is something you cannot find in other countries. I think that is why Lolita is increasing its fan base not only in Japan but also abroad.”
“People in Japan used to look at foreign fashion magazines in the 1980s to learn from them even though they could not read them,” Tajima said. “But now Europeans and American Lolita fans buy clothes after checking our magazine despite being unable to understand Japanese. We can find the same kind of enthusiasm among them that Japanese used to have in their fashion.”
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Tags: Autumn And Winter, Blouses, Catwalk, Chins, Daily Yomiuri, Fashion Expo, Flower Basket, Hair Arrangements, Hiroshi, Hiroshi Mo, Jealkb, Kanon, Kumi, Live Performances, Moriya, Place Where People, Platform Shoes, Ribbons, Rock Artists, Rock Fashion, Stuffed Animal, Wearing Skirts