Japan as fashion: Contemporary reflections on being fashionable

Noriko Onohara

doi:10.15388/aov.2011.0.1095

Abstract

University of HyogoThis paper examines how Japanese contemporary fashion has been accepted globally, especially in the case of London. The popularity of Japanese fashion in the West started in the 19th century with kimono-style dressing gowns, but for the true design influence known as Japan-shock, we had to wait for the appearance of the avantgarde Japanese fashion designers who participated in the Paris collection in the 1970s and 1980s. A new keyword for ‘fashionable Japan’ today is kawaii, the notion of cute. This is intimately linked to street fashion and subculture and has been established and received as part of ‘cool Japan’ through the worldwide popularity of Japanese manga and anime. Moreover, it could be said that Japan is fashionable and the Japanese are thought of as fashionable people, but who is described as fashionable, and by whom? To reflect upon this statement, ‘the Japanese are fashionable’, as ideology, picking up the globally popular Japanese street fashion magazine FRUiTS, I would like to investigate the double meaning of fashion in the present and also what it means to be fashionable.

Highlights

From 2005 to 2006 I was a visiting researcher at London University’s UCL
This paper was written based on my comments for the talk ‘Harajuku as Fashion Contact Zone’ by Philomena Keet at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, in 2008 and my open lecture ‘Japan as Fashion: Contemporary Reflections of Being Fashionable’ at the TrAIN Research Centre, University of Arts London, in 2010
Eating sushi, reading FRUiTS, talking about kawaii, all these actions denote that Harajuku has been globalised and has become a new contact zone, a new anchor for the system of fashion, with a dynamic interplay of harmony and friction

Summary

Introduction

From 2005 to 2006 I was a visiting researcher at London University’s UCL. For many of the English I met there, the Japanese were ‘fashionable people’. It is very important to understand the specificity of what came to be known as Japanese or Tokyo street fashion, what counts as fashionable in this context of a sensibility that emerged from taking pictures of European haute couture and prêt-a-porter. It is contact between those who see and those who are seen, between the semi-professional photographers and the tourists, and the girls who wear Lolita fashion.

Results

Conclusion