dresses or boys in makeup and leather pants are enacting a peaceful, beautiful rebellion against traditional values and a system that is no longer working, which may, literally, bring its society to extinction. Thus, the streets of Harajuku and Shibuya are filled day and night with ultraglamorous social rejects, each with their own tribes, each who’ve found identities outside Japanese mainstream society and express this through their clothes. It is a fantasy of escape and an expression of rebellion in the form of Hello Kitties come to life and S&M leather. The lolitas and their darker offshoot, the gothic lolitas, emulate the style of Victorian dolls. The “gyaru,” a Japanification of the English word “gal,” are rather like living barbies with blonde hair, fake tans and big nails. Their natural habitat is Shibuya 109, a department store chocked full of the latest trends that each girl pursues with blind passion. Guys who do “visual-kei” dress just like Anne Rice’s rock-singing vampire, Lestat, from the 2003 film, The Queen of the Damned, with big hair gelled to impossible heights, dark velvet, crosses, silver chains, and lots and lots of skintight leather. Each look fulfills some sort of fantasy for the wearer and like the characters of the anime Sailor Moon, they gain power once they transform, only through their daily dress-up. Growing up I idolized Sailor Moon and it’s what helped instill a love and appreciation for Japanese culture in me. As a nerdy,
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girly kid I used to watch Sailor Moon go from a crybaby flunking middle school to a glamorous, invincible hero and long, so badly, to transform beyond a reality I found hostile. You can imagine then, just how much it meant to me when I went to the opening night of the new Sailor Moon musical (the first in ten years) and just happened to get a seat right in front of the series’ creator, Naoko Takaeuchi. I had come to Japan and fulfilled a fantasy I’d harbored all my life and, like a dream, the characters I’ve idolized since kindergarten leapt off the page and paraded on stage, singing and swinging swords. I realized then that it was the fantasy I lived in as a kid that brought me the strength to endure bullying and the harsh reality of “not fitting in,” I endured and overcame because I held on to a dream that one day I could transform beyond the need to endure and overcome, into happiness. Years later, I’m in Tokyo, quite literally living my dream. These comics, cartoons and clothes might just be fantasies and escapism but from them, we garner the strength to change the world around us, to become more than just what society would expect us to be, but the person we’d like to be, who we really are. Through fashion, Japanese fashion tribes have crafted individual identities that reject the confining roles of mainstream, conservative Japanese society. This is, every stitch, seam and zipper, a fashion revolution. em
“AMERICANA” F/W 2013