Japanese Street Fashion Styles

Japan is famous for its astonishing street fashion and creates its own character on fashion and style around the world. There are five main categories of styles. Japanese street fashion has been influenced from anime, toys and gadgets as well as their own style of Japanese street art. This in turn influenced streetwear as a whole and the different types of styles and designs were adopted worldwide market. The Japanese have always been good at borrowing from the west (technology and style) and turning it into something completely different and original. Don’t forget that western clothes have a short history in Japan. Rather than following Europeans, Japanese girls were customizing elements of the traditional Japanese dress – Kimono, Obi and Geta sandals – and combining them with handmade, secondhand clothes. It’s a bit like a collage. Nowadays each Japanese street look’ has its own avant-garde designers and brands. Style is all about rebellious individual self-expression, which is very interesting since Japans culture views Individualism negatively, and associates it with selfishness. The five main fashion styles are:

Kogals means small girl or child. Kogals are of girls and young women in urban Japan, one of several types also called gals. They are characterized through unique tastes in fashion, music, and social activity. In general, the kogal “look” roughly approximates a sun-tanned beach girl.

Ganguro translated “black-face” This trend peaked in popularity from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, an outgrowth of chapatsu hair dyeing. Tokyo is the centre of ganguro fashion. The basic look consists of bleached hair, a deep tan, both black and white eyeliners, false eyelashes, platform shoes (usually sandals or boots), and brightly coloured outfits. Another typical gadget of “Ganguro Gal” is cell phones are covered with purikura stickers. The typical outfits are tie-dyed sarongs, mini-skirts, hibiscus flower hairpins, and lots of bracelets, rings and necklaces.

Gosurori known as ‘’Gothic Lolita’’ is one of the most popular style amongst Japanese teenagers. Victorian-style girl’s clothing and often aims to imitate the look of Victorian porcelain dolls. The origin is a combination of Lolita fashion—appearing deliberately cute to the point of looking childish—and certain styles found within gothic fashion. The style started as a youth subculture sometime around 1997-98 and became a well-established genre available in various boutiques and some major department stores by around 2001.

Cosplay means ‘’dressing up’’ or also stands for ‘’costume’’ and ‘’play’’. Cosplay is popular in places like Tokyo’s Harajuku. Sometimes also called Harajuku style. Harajuku is also known as a famous tourist attraction. This dressing style is linked to dressing up favourite character from manga, anime, video games, J Rock or pop band or movie.

Maid Café- these style is associated with a café called ’’maid café’’ The cafes are located in a few major cities like Osaka, Akihabara and Shinjuku. In maid cafes. In maid cafes, typical manga-style maids”Maido serve tea and cakes. Waitresses in maid cafés are often chosen on the basis of their appearance; most are young, attractive and innocent-looking women.