Japanese Street Style #1
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i've purchased some here http://www.street-mg.com/xnew/e/index.html
I know! It got me switched on to the whole punk-ethnic look now, love Japanese Fashion!!Could be intresting to some :-
With a rebel yell
Angela Neustatter
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Hitomi Kanehara, 21, sits on the edge of a leather sofa in a Tokyo hotel, long legs evident in a pleated schoolgirlish skirt. Sheeny hair frames a startlingly pretty, childish face and an expression of sweet innocence. You could be excused, then, for viewing Kanehara as the embodiment of all those enduring male fantasies of what makes the ideal Japanese woman: naive submissiveness, ornate femininity and girlish sexuality. ..............................................................................................................................[/font]
In fact, in-your-face sexuality has surely been a hallmark of female expression for decades. Japanese journalist Yo Yahata has railed against this subculture in Sekai magazine. Neo-masochism defines the young, he says, and picks on the "number one fashion among Japanese youth", Goth-Loli, which, as the name suggests, is a combination of the Gothic and the Lolita look, as symbolising "something we call the tendency towards the dark".
Youth fashion has, certainly, expressed the challenge to convention and tradition as effectively as anything, going through several incarnations. In the 1980s the dominant style was Kawaii, meaning cute and essentially childlike, adorable, innocent and vulnerable. There seemed to be little subversive about it in its early saccharine form. But, according to journalist Sharon Kinsella, "It evolved to a more humorous, kitsch and androgynous style", and in due course became "the more knowing Chou-Kawaii" (super-cute).
Kogal followed in the early 1990s, defined by knee-length socks, bleached hair, distinct makeup and short school uniform skirts. This had the required effect of appalling older Japanese with its "impertinent panache, independence, sexuality and self-confidence".
From the Kogal fashion came subversive graffiti photos taken by and featuring very young women, using basic little cameras. In them, the young women caricature sexy poses and classic beauty, or they subvert femininity altogether by pulling grotesque faces and attempting to look repulsive. Associate professor Laura Miller, a specialist in Japanese studies at Loyola University, Chicago, explains the motivation behind this rebellion: "Japanese girls are constantly bombarded with messages from a beauty industry and the media that exhort them to be feminine and sexy. They are simultaneously admonished at home and at school to be chaste and submissive through confining gender norms." Through fashion, comics, graffiti and language, they can show their disdain for such contradictory messages, she says.
Taken from an article on new Japanese fiction by female writers .
I thought the ideas on fashion to be quite enlightening .
With a rebel yell
Angela Neustatter
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Hitomi Kanehara, 21, sits on the edge of a leather sofa in a Tokyo hotel, long legs evident in a pleated schoolgirlish skirt. Sheeny hair frames a startlingly pretty, childish face and an expression of sweet innocence. You could be excused, then, for viewing Kanehara as the embodiment of all those enduring male fantasies of what makes the ideal Japanese woman: naive submissiveness, ornate femininity and girlish sexuality. ..............................................................................................................................[/font]
In fact, in-your-face sexuality has surely been a hallmark of female expression for decades. Japanese journalist Yo Yahata has railed against this subculture in Sekai magazine. Neo-masochism defines the young, he says, and picks on the "number one fashion among Japanese youth", Goth-Loli, which, as the name suggests, is a combination of the Gothic and the Lolita look, as symbolising "something we call the tendency towards the dark".
Youth fashion has, certainly, expressed the challenge to convention and tradition as effectively as anything, going through several incarnations. In the 1980s the dominant style was Kawaii, meaning cute and essentially childlike, adorable, innocent and vulnerable. There seemed to be little subversive about it in its early saccharine form. But, according to journalist Sharon Kinsella, "It evolved to a more humorous, kitsch and androgynous style", and in due course became "the more knowing Chou-Kawaii" (super-cute).
Kogal followed in the early 1990s, defined by knee-length socks, bleached hair, distinct makeup and short school uniform skirts. This had the required effect of appalling older Japanese with its "impertinent panache, independence, sexuality and self-confidence".
From the Kogal fashion came subversive graffiti photos taken by and featuring very young women, using basic little cameras. In them, the young women caricature sexy poses and classic beauty, or they subvert femininity altogether by pulling grotesque faces and attempting to look repulsive. Associate professor Laura Miller, a specialist in Japanese studies at Loyola University, Chicago, explains the motivation behind this rebellion: "Japanese girls are constantly bombarded with messages from a beauty industry and the media that exhort them to be feminine and sexy. They are simultaneously admonished at home and at school to be chaste and submissive through confining gender norms." Through fashion, comics, graffiti and language, they can show their disdain for such contradictory messages, she says.
Taken from an article on new Japanese fiction by female writers .
I thought the ideas on fashion to be quite enlightening .
That's a really interesting point, I hadn't really thought of it that way beforeSanDiego said:
I kind of agree though, at least it seems that they've shifted the focus to the torso and away from the legs in most cases. I suppose it's an attractive prospect since it's more flattering for most figures? 
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i_<3_chanel
elementary.
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thankyou for the lovely pictures tiffany & arug ! 
i love this ! & the girl in black & white !
i love this ! & the girl in black & white !
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