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harajuku

MrsAmberface

=] how many am i at?
22 Feb 2006
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okay i dun't think think this is the right forum for this does anyone know anything about harajuku girls? 🌹
 
yesh. i like japanese street fashion and harajuku (but i dont like gwen :eek: (if you know what im saying (her songs...(many people like harajuku from her songs))))
 
that's how i got into them that's not why i like them gwen introduced me to japan pretty much haha
 
Ah well, thats that then.

Um, I dont think its really music based but whatever. The thread is here so I guess I'll put my stamp on it.

Harajuku fashion is mostly portrayed as the type of mix and match create your own style type of pics you see in fruits but in reality I think its because people are all hyped up about "harajuku girls" and have no idea where harjuku is even on a map. Harajuku girls are not the status symbol people make them out to be. Theyre just girls and boys who have a unique sense of style and happen to have a place to group together on the weekends to show off and get their pic in Gothic Lolita Bible or Fruits or any other publication. It kind of wierds me out that other styles arnt given enough attention when people think of the "harajuku girls" like EGA EGL or EGP arnt given enough credit when disscussing the area. Although one must keep in mind that these are very ordered looks and even the amount of effort going into one outfit is so expensive and time consuming! Yeesh! If I could tell you how ong it used to take me to get into full loli gear back when I was wearing sweet lolita! 😌

Really I think theres nothing all that special and "foreighn" about harajuku girls. I see the same stuff day to day here in Diego and were not even one of the biggest Cali cities. I mean Buffalo Exchange is the same stuff and so are recycled fashion shops and what not, but people arnt interested in whats going on in their own back yard. I have a friend who works at Exchange and she says she gets a lot of 13 - 16 year olds comming in and saying "Wow! Youre so like Fruits!" Shes been into this type of fashion for as long as Ive known her and has been working there scince before that damned book came over here to the US and says that its really disheartening to hear peoople talk about this type of fashion like its just a Jap thing considering how long people have been putting their all into it here in the states.

On the other hand if it gets people into jrock or more probably jpop considering the flavor of the bridge then what can I say? I watched a girl at my high school transform from absolutely ZERO fashion sence to some pretty kickin outfits and she always had a copy of fruits in one hand an an ipod blasting Gwen in the other. I guess it just depends how you roll. I personally have that song on a cd somewhere so I guess I cant blast it too much. But I dont approve the americanizing of something people perceive to be Japanese style seeing as

1) like Ive already mentioned above its already here in the states

and

2) People hardly ever get it right. Have you seen Gwens fashion line that supposed to be Harajuku? Some of the ugliest things Ive ever seen....`
 
I love gothic lolita, well more like ega. But I have always been afraid to wear it. I always say one day I am going to go to either Victorian Maiden, Miho Matsuda or Alice Auaa, and splurge. But my family is very closed minded about that kind of stuff, and I am already the weird one lol.

But more than egl I love decora WHEN ITS DONE RIGHT if its not done right it looks very tacky. And I love tokyo street style.

I sometimes dress with those stye influence. Like I have several Victiorian stye shirts, About 3 corsets, and a few skirts. I also have a lot of color full stockings and lots of bright clothes. But I have my own style of doing it, in that I am very hip hop lol. And as much as I love EGL and Decora I love hip hop dressing more. So It has a very hip hop edge to it, the way I dress. Most people say I have really good taste, if not a bit weird, but not in a tacky or bad looking way.

But just once I want to go full out, and do EGL or EGA or decora without getting stared at.
 
I know what you mean, hence the reason I think the other styles are more highly publisized. Their easyer to do and like I said above they take a hell of a lot of time to do right. When I was younger sweet lolita used to be my look of choice (like baby the stars shine bright, metamorphose, mary magdaline ect ) before I settled onto my "big" lolita look of ega (with moi meme moite hnaoto black peace now ect and what not). Now I'm settled into more of a *shudder* "harajuku" look with silver space boots and more jewlery than whats good for me because it *is* easyer and I *do* love the look. But that dosent lean that I dont still dress up. Honestly Ive been tight lacing for so long sometimes its uncomftorable to breathe without a corset on. I just think that the style deserves a bit more of a nod when discussing the area even though there are a lot of factors pulling against it that a westerner might not be able to pull off afford or whatever. I sear when I was following sweet lolita Id go through a can of aqua net a day to keep those curles in. T-T
 
I moved this thread to 'All things Japanese', because... well, because it's fashion, rather than music. :)
 
HMH <---i understand well i mean i know ppl that dress like that have for years gwen juss made it famous so yeah i understand i think she juss brought a big culture shock from japan to america... as for the fruits thing...i've never heard of it
Nana<---i understand fully and completely i've had a hip hop sense of style for a long time i'm afraid to dress any other way cause i'm the "odd ball out" at my house my family isn't close minded but i think that style also costs money....which we don't have either...so yeah
thank you all for the comments as well:)
 
First off, let's put our cards on the table: The girls who hang out with gwen, are, regular run of the mill Los Angeles girls, tarted up to look like Gwen's version of Japan--- A sort of West meets West vision of urban style. It's a marketing thing, a banal, boring, racist, white, marketing ploy aimed at making Asian girls the same sort of fetish object that they've always been.

But, guess what? Japan doesn't care--- really, unless they are just skipping the subtext of the whole thing, they're quite pleased and within the last three months even ran a front page spread (ed: in Asahi Shimbun) with Gwen and her dancers, proclaiming that the world was catching on to 'kawaii'... This is true of most things that Westerners (like me), think that the Japanese should find offense to--- things like Lost in Translation, which I've not met a single Japanese person to say a negative word of.

Japanese fashion is about repressing the idea that you're going to be stuck at home raising kids for the rest of your life while your husband goes off to a horrible job, an hour a day in the morning, and one comming home on the train, working long hours--- Maybe you're female and you get a job, and you get less than the boys, you get no vacation, no respect, little money, for equitable work...

So you dress like a member of Malice Mizer nee--- an 18th century Victorian goth princess, or staple teddybears to your clothes and you hang out down town until you are 18, at 18 maybe you get a job, yet you keep living with your parents--- living the expendable income life of the freeter.

I really don't care if people pick up or put down what they think Japanese culture is---* I really don't care for Gwen's version of white appropriation of foreign culture either. What can you say about a woman who pays four American Asians to pretend to be ignorant of the English language and surround her all the time, as what she calls her "imaginary friends"... Whomever said it, said it best when they said, "Gwen Steffani is what WHITE is...".

This is the first that I've seen it directly, but Gwen being the cultural Envoy to Japan is like Amos and Andy hosting Black History Month on BET.

*(ed: honestly, I think, more often than not, each interpretation of Japanese culture outside of Japan tends to be a diluted and misguided attempt to fit a cultural stereotype into a mold that validates the co-opter, rather than something that reflects and amplifies the original meaning... but hey, that's me. Besides, it works both ways.)
 
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