Harajuku Street Style
January 7, 2005 4:12 PM   Subscribe

Harajuku Street Style. Oh those crazy cool Japanese kids! The streets of Harajuku are as much a fashion playground as they are an exhibit of Why You Should Never Pair White Boots with Gold Chains. This is, of course, in line with the existing weirdness of the brilliant Katamari Damacy, mayonnaise-and-squid pizza, and the "no caption required" homoerotic dating sim "le, Tatemasu!",
posted by riffraff (34 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
[insert gwen stefani/minstrel show comment here]
posted by u.n. owen at 4:27 PM on January 7, 2005


Looks like another day in Hollywood or the Haight or a hundred other places.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:29 PM on January 7, 2005


Harajuku passed its peak back in 1999 or so, when cyber went out of fashion. Now it's just a bunch of hobo-looking kids with ugly hats.
posted by Bugbread at 4:37 PM on January 7, 2005


So where are the cool fashion peeps of Tokyo hanging out then, and why isn't there a website for it?
posted by chaz at 4:40 PM on January 7, 2005


This was previously covered here. I have a set of del.icio.us harajuku on which I've been working.
posted by filchyboy at 4:40 PM on January 7, 2005


As a Hobo, I take offense to that! (ties handkerchief filled with stuff to stick and walks away)
posted by helvetica at 4:40 PM on January 7, 2005


Chaz: Well, there aren't many cool Tokyo kids now. Of course, cool is in the eye of the beholder, so if you think those pics are cool, then Harajuku is the place. If you think guys with dark tans, silver hair, green extensions, and wraparound frameless shades are cool, it's Shibuya. If you think goths are cool, it's...well, part of Harajuku too. For the tastefully dressed, I guess Aoyama or something. But in my jaded eyes, there used to be really cool, radically dressed kids in Japan, in Harajuku and in Amemura (in Osaka), but they've grown up and been replaced by...well, what you see in the links above, which I personally don't find so cool. YMMV.
posted by Bugbread at 4:48 PM on January 7, 2005


Helvetica, can I use you in my movie company logo?
posted by NickDouglas at 4:56 PM on January 7, 2005


Oh man! I knew my ruffled tuxedo shirt was hot fashion!
posted by NickDouglas at 4:58 PM on January 7, 2005


I always flip through Fruits when I see it in a bookstore, though I guess it's dated by now. These kids have a mind-boggling capacity for attention to detail.
posted by Marit at 5:12 PM on January 7, 2005


Bring back ganguro!
posted by SpaceCadet at 5:43 PM on January 7, 2005


i don't know that my opinion counts here... i'm still wearing my 12-year-old brown eight-eyed docs, ya know... but, in my humble opinion japan's the place where fashion originates... and this link seems to capture that quite well. sure, what they're doing is adapting and revising a lot of international trends, but the outcome's totally unique, something totally japanese... something you're sure to see in north american media in the near future. personally, i've never ever seen more beautifully fashionable people anwhere than those in shibuya, ginza, omotesando and a dozen other -kus in tokyo. thanks for the interesting link.
posted by RockyChrysler at 6:03 PM on January 7, 2005


The FRUiTS book is great, but yeah, the pictures are probably way outdated by now. The magazine FRUiTS is still going strong, tho'.
posted by May Kasahara at 6:08 PM on January 7, 2005


Spacecadet: Ganguro is (kinda) back. A little different (in a hard to explain way), and not nearly as dark or crazy as before, but it is kinda back.

Actually, a fashion that occurs to me that y'all not living in Japan may not be aware of are kigurumin. Last summer and fall there were a lot of those in Shibuya.

And, no, they're not furries.
posted by Bugbread at 6:38 PM on January 7, 2005


Cool, bugbread. Even more interesting when translated by Google:
In production of feast * party * event effective preeminence! large receiving you are not wrong!
posted by icetaco at 6:53 PM on January 7, 2005


Actually, a fashion that occurs to me that y'all not living in Japan may not be aware of are kigurumin.

That needs to become a worldwide trend like, right now. It's like the bear pajamas in Serial Experiments Lain, but as streetwear.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:03 PM on January 7, 2005


Shift Japan has a "Girls On The Street" feature (sorry no direct link) that usually focuses on Japan, but not always. It's sort of like this, except less candid.
posted by miragliuolo at 7:08 PM on January 7, 2005


This brings back some recent memories. It was only a few months after I made this comment that I actually got to see the fascinating goths at Harajuku on a Sunday. What made it even more fascinating was that there was a big dedication thing going on at the Meiji Shrine at the same time so there were people in ultra traditional kimonos and yutakas along side the weird and wonderful Harajuku goths. Man I can't wait to go back to Japan.
posted by Jase_B at 7:47 PM on January 7, 2005


Whoa, the fashion is wacky and all that, but the link to "Ie, Tatemasu!" seems rather out-of-place. Yeah, it's a review of a porn game, but it's a rather heartfelt one (you have to read it for this to make sense) that ends up being an analysis of Japanese gay life as much as the game itself. A weird juxtaposition with the "Wooooo, craaaaaazy Japan!" tone of the rest of the post.
posted by Anonymous at 7:51 PM on January 7, 2005


PST, Lain's bear suit was the first thing I thought of, too. I kind of want one. It looked so comfy...
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:30 PM on January 7, 2005


bugbread's mention of kigurumin had me thinking... aren't "Gothic Lolita" girls in Japan different from what westerners thing of goths? I think I remember reading about the differences somewhere a long time ago...
posted by May Kasahara at 8:37 PM on January 7, 2005


Here, I snagged some pics of Shibuya style for y'all:

First, here's the really extreme examples that make you stop and go "huh?!":

Kigurumin Notice the drawn on whiskers on some of them. The guys (can't find any pics) don't wear the outfits, but last summer I saw lots of guys with drawn on whiskers.
Gals (Yes, that's a technical term)
Basic makeup tips
Advanced makeup tips
Summer means kimonos

Now for more of the average stuff you see every day.

But this is more the average person in Shibuya.
More normal-for-Shibuya people
Bog standard

On preview: Goth lolita googling brought up this good site: http://www.blue-period.fsnet.co.uk/egl.html. It's pretty darn accurate. And this time I didn't have to scour the whole damn internet to get a selection of pics. Ugh.
posted by Bugbread at 8:49 PM on January 7, 2005


Great pics, bugbread.

I think this style is what they call "inverted panda" in Japanese.
posted by sour cream at 9:09 PM on January 7, 2005


May - I think they're more Gaiman Goth than Graveyard Goth. It appears that the whole Goth meme has been hyper sexualized.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:11 PM on January 7, 2005


Ah, Kigurumin. Nice to know it has a name other than adorable. But ganguro is simply wrong.
posted by fatllama at 9:14 PM on January 7, 2005


The lesson being: Dude, if you're gonna post "look at how weird the Japanese are" pictures, they gotta be a fuck of a lot weirder than that.
posted by fungible at 9:25 PM on January 7, 2005


You know, like this kind of stuff. I love this shit.
posted by fungible at 9:34 PM on January 7, 2005


Finally, a monkey outfit!

I call for a mass monkeying in the streets. Who's with me?
posted by Katemonkey at 2:47 AM on January 8, 2005


Katemoney: I call for a mass monkeying in the streets. Who's with me?
I began to notice a lot of girls wearing those weird animal suits around Tokyo just before I left. I also remember a TV show that seemed to be showing off weird Japanese fashion and at one point the show had a bitch off between a group of animal girls and a group of high school girls. Quite bizzare but every entertaining!
posted by Jase_B at 6:43 AM on January 8, 2005


Nick; as a hobo or a typeface?
posted by helvetica at 10:43 AM on January 8, 2005


I hope western people get over their "ooh, look, the japanese are so wacky!" obsession soon. It's making the internet awful tedious.
posted by nightchrome at 12:13 PM on January 8, 2005


"Ooh, look, the japanese are so wacky!" or not, here's a few of my portraits from Harajuku on Sundays.
posted by dead_ at 2:30 PM on January 8, 2005


[insert gwen stefani/minstrel show comment here]
posted by u.n. owen at 7:27 PM EST on January 7

- my first thought as well, there must be thousands of teenage girls listening to her new album wondering what the fuck Harajuku is. Im sure that we will see at least a niche occurrence of this in the states in the coming months. She even has rapper Eve giving shouts to the fashion district..... maybe she saw it first on metafilter.....
posted by sourbrew at 4:04 PM on January 8, 2005


my first thought as well, there must be thousands of teenage girls listening to her new album wondering what the fuck Harajuku is.

Heehee. Nicely apropos. People living in Western countries hear Gwen Stefani sing (?) about Harajuku, and go, "What's Harajuku?". Here I am, living near Harajuku, hearing about Gwen Stefani sing (?) about Harajuku, and going, "Who's Gwen Stefani?"
posted by Bugbread at 5:55 PM on January 8, 2005


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