At the time of its initial establishment in 2005, Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC) offered a revolutionary alternative to the standard industry “fashion show.” E-commerce company Xavel (now Branding Inc.) founded TGC as a multimedia fashion event focusing on “real clothes” — low-priced domestic brands with an eye towards street trends. Instead of generic foreign drones imported from Eastern Europe, TGC used young models from popular magazines to parade the clothes on the runway. With its winning formula, TGC found quick success and ultimately rewrote the rules for Japanese fashion: choosing inclusivity over exclusivity and immediate relevance over artistic intention. TGC was “real” fashion for “real” Japanese women. Take a hike, “fake” fashion purveyors!

Now in 2009, Tokyo Girls Collection has taken its rightful place as a core institution of the Japanese fashion world, with big sponsors all clamoring to get a piece of the action. Uniqlo has just offered its second TGC collaboration — spring blazers promoted with popular ViVi model Marie. Last weekend’s 2009 Spring/Summer TGC took the brand line-up into totally new territory: select shops Beams, Kitson, and Free’s Shop, as well as originally-American brands Milkfed and Jill Stuart. All five are much more “fashion-forward” in the traditional snobby sense than the usual Shibuya 109 fare. The inclusion of these brands perfectly illustrated the fact that TGC is no longer a niche event for offshoots of the Shibuya gyaru subculture but an event where 20,000 female consumers with open minds and relatively heavy wallets can congregate and party. In just four years, TGC has become completely and utterly mainstream.

The day after Tokyo Girls Collection, Branding Inc. held TGC’s “little sister” event Shibuya Girls Collection (SGC) on the same Yoyogi National Stadium stage. Most wondered whether back-to-back Girls Collections would not mutually cannibalize audiences, but the pre-show buzz had the younger SGC outselling its big sister TGC. By the day of the event, all tickets for SGC had totally sold out. The day of the show, the arena was completely packed — with even the press seats over-run with eager girls. (Although SGC offered a “Men’s Stage” to show Oniikei fashion brands modeled by Men’s Egg superstars, the crowd was ultimately over 90% women.)

The two Girls Collections essentially share the same format, but SGC is a completely different beast than TGC — almost like the young weekend crowds at Shibuya 109 broke into the stadium and threw their own fashion show. As the name suggests, Tokyo GC is about girls’ street fashion in a wide and comprehensive sense, encompassing the diversity of looks found in Japan’s capital. SGC, on the other hand, is all about the specific gyaru style that emerged in the Shibuya neighborhood in the mid-’90s and remains strong. Accordingly, the SGC atmosphere was much more subcultural and niche than TGC, representing a fashion world that remains under the shadows of the “serious” industry. But despite the more narrow focus, the seats were equally packed at TGC, proving that the Shibuya fashion movement is just as legitimate in size and energy as the “mainstream” of fashion.

That does not mean, however, that SGC is particularly comprehensible to outsiders. I nominally cover the girls’ “street” fashion beat, and yet, most of the details of SGC culture are totally alien to me. TGC employs beloved magazine stars with name-value: celebrities who double as dramatic actresses (like Karina), singers (like Yu Yamada), and general TV talent (like Marie). Many are even known outside the confines of the “real clothes” fashion world. The participating TGC brands too, like Beams, are universally well-known. SGC’s models, in comparison, may draw total blanks even with a hardcore TGC audience. They are total unknowns to anyone besides avid Popteen readers. The “star” model of SGC was Tsubasa Masuwaka — a 23 year-old ex-Popteen model and young mother who is big with the kids in Shibuya but has no connection to the mainstream entertainment industry. (She is sometimes featured on TV shows but only in news stories about her marketing power with teens. Despite her popularity, she is not invited to be a cute tarento on quiz shows.) Tsubasa is just the tip of the iceberg. The crowd’s other favorites — Wei Son, Jun Komori, Yui Kanno, and Kumiko Funayama — also came from Popteen. Admittedly, Popteen is a popular magazine in terms of readers, but representative of a style without much influence on mass culture.

With SGC relying on dokusha “reader” models — young fans of the magazine who volunteer posing and smiling services to magazines for little-to-no money — the model pool was markedly amateur. Most SGC models are about 5′4″ max. Star Tsubasa does not even hit five-foot. The SGC heroes dwarf in comparison to the professional long-legged models of TGC. Of course, these imperfections are what makes the girls so popular with readers: what could be more “real” and imitable than a 4′11″ model? And likewise, opposed to the half-Japanese mania of TGC, almost everyone at SGC is “pure” Japanese. The gap between fans and models at SGC thus becomes incredibly narrow. But since fans pay good money to attend, the models need to look “larger than life.” This needs pushes the girls to ramp up their normally over-tanned and bleach-blond appearance to the maximum degree: dark skin tones, faces caked with glitter, hair curled, crimped, permed, and teased out. They all looked like an army of idealized gyaru robots hot off the beaches of Hawaii.

While SGC’s official cast of characters gravitated towards’ Popteen’s gyaru world, the prevailing fashion style of attendees came straight out of post-gyaru fashion magazine ViVi’s sophisticated and hard-boiled look. The uniform was shoulder-length hair with curled bangs, black leather motorcycle jackets, unzipped hoodie sweatshirts in bright blues, black-and-white horizontal striped T-shirts, high-waist tiered skirts or shorts, big belt buckles, and a man’s fedora. There was also an unexpected outbreak of giant bows propped up in girls’ hair. Perhaps this post-gyaru look is the current style moment for the Shibuya streets — a mishmash of original gyaru surf culture, Ura-Harajuku streetwear, punk influences, high-fashion silhouettes, and the elegant tastes of the original ’90s kogyaru who have graduated from the movement and created their own up-market brands. A more likely explanation is that the hardcore gyaru — those who take the style to formidable delinquent yankii extremes — were not going to shell out the ?3,000 for tickets. Or maybe they were in the cheap seats at top.

So here was the strange divide: the crowds came to see their Popteen idols up-close, and yet, they choose a personal fashion style much more mainstream than the hardcore gyaru formula. Gyaru style originated in the 1990s as an delinquent upper-class high-school subculture, but as the decade progressed, the rich girls ceded leadership to rural working-class yankii followers. The army of sexy and tan kogyaru transformed into monstrous ganguro. Gyaru has returned to its more aesthetically-palatable roots in recent years, but the movement’s heart and values still stay close to the lower socioeconomic stratum, best evidenced by the large crossover between the style and employees at host clubs and low-priced “cabaret-club” hostess bars. So while the audience felt a step apart from the core gyaru style, the models on stage (especially the male models) generally embrace and embody the yankii delinquent lifestyle. This made SGC feel like an act of selling the allure and rebellion of Japanese working class delinquent subculture to middle class kids. Up to this point in Japan, the fashion industry has rarely indulged in this kind of marketing practice. Usually, elements of delinquent subcultures were forced to do their own marketing.

Most analysis on the two Girls Collections tends to focus on the possibilities the events have for the fashion market, as if Japan Fashion Week or even Paris Fashion Week could take a lesson or two from this real clothes festa. But lumping these “fashion shows” all together misses the true dynamic of TGC and SGC: sure, there are clothes traveling down the runways, but everything about the event makes the apparel feel like an afterthought. The multiple giant jumbotrons behind the runway zoom in on the model’s face for almost her entire walk down the path, save a single full-body scan. The press releases always boast about “girls buying clothes on their cell phones right as the clothes hit the runway” but I have never observed this “real-time e-commerce” in the audience; the girls are usually too busy cheering their favorite stars to take the time to buy clothes. Surely brands that participate get a huge promotional bump, but I think the excitement is less about shopping, commercial transactions, and apparel and more about being in the same room as celebrities.

But as much as we believe the Popteen models are the draw, those subcultural folk heroes still lose out to the bigger crowd-pleaser: TV stars. A surprise appearance from Becky — a half-Japanese TV talent who is not a member of the gyaru community by any definition — elicited prolonged and severe screams from fans. After attending a handful of these “real clothes” events, I can tentatively conclude that the crowd is most interested in celebrating “celebrity.” They may love their community icons like Tsubasa, but they go absolutely crazy with the appearance of an honest-to-god variety show regular.

So there is an unconscious tension boiling under SGC between the “gyaru community” and mainstream culture, but while the crowd loves the surprise of celebrity appearance, the 20,000 young women did not show up to Yoyogi National Stadium to see sumo wrestlers and musicians. They want to take part in the Shibuya fashion community. Shibuya Girls Collection proves that there is a huge — and growing — market around the gyaru subculture. Popteen is one of the few magazines to gain readers over the last few years (And the magazine looks more like the deeply working-class hostess-circular Koakuma Ageha by the minute.) As non-community members, we tend to reach for the word “subcultural” to describe SGC’s style and dramatic personae, as if these strange girls are interested in something far removed from our comfortable “mainstream” cultural paradigm. But in fact, the overwhelming popularity of SGC proves how little influence the entrenched mainstream entertainment and fashion worlds have in the 21st century. The powerful forces of traditional industry now all band together for TGC, but even with such support, the mainstream TGC does not really attract any more people than the niche SGC. When it comes to subcultural affiliation, the gyaru numbers are rising and the generic mainstream plurality is shrinking. SGC is not just popular in its own right, but may be a harbinger of bigger things to come for bottom-up culture.

This was cross-published on our sister site clast.

今度こそっ！マリンルック！！

毎年この時期のトレンドで浮上するのが“マリンルック”だ。私も去年、ボーダーパーカーを購入した記憶があるが、今年の“それ”には勢いがある。

「毎年マリンテイストは出てきますが、今年は早くからニットやカットソー、ワンピースを求めるお客様が多いです。ショップで提案しているのは、ボーダーワンピースにロングダブルテーラードジャケットのミックスコーディネイト。それぞれのアイテムで楽しめますから」。表参道ヒルズにあるセレクトショップ『KiwaSylphy』の販売員の方が話してくれた。

実際に表参道沿いのショップには、トリコロールカラーのニットや紺ブレ＋ホワイトパンツ、ハイウエストのセーラーパンツやセーラーカラーのニットを着たトルソーを多く見かけるし、3月号のsweetでは、100人のプレスが「春のリアル売れ筋」でTOP1にオススメしている。メンズ,レディス共にGジャンを押すブランドもちらほら目につくが“マリン”との相性は抜群だ。（画像はsweet3月号より引用）

どうやら今度こそっ、街に“海気分”が溢れそうだ。

Every year around this time, the fashion industry starts pushing the “Marine Look.” Last spring, I felt compelled to buy a striped parka, but it seems like the marine urge is even stronger this year.

One of the store staff from Omotesando Hills select shop KiwaSylphy told me:

“Marine style comes out every year, but this year there have already been a lot of customers who are looking for marine knits, cut-and-sew, and dresses. The store suggests mixing a striped dress with a long double-breasted blazer, so you can have fun with each of the items separately.

Lots of shop windows along Omotesando Avenue have mannequins wearing tricolore knits, navy blazers with white shorts, high-waist sailor pants, and sailor color sweaters. The March 2009 issue of popular fashion magazine Sweet recommends marine as the #1 “Real Selling Item of Spring” in a poll of 100 press officers from brands. And all the denim jackets I see brands pushing for both men and women also work great with the marine look.

Whatever the case, it looks like the streets will be overflowing with navy boys and girls in a few months.

(Picture from the March 2009 issue of Sweet.)

隠れヒット商品！

北海道を除く日本列島には時間差はあれど、一定時期に長雨の続く『梅雨』という季節がある。この天の恵みがあればこそ、お米や野菜の収穫ができるのだけど…。

それは理解していても、雨の日の靴選びは難易度が高い。革製品は変形や水漏れがおこり、お手入れが大変。かといってスニーカーで出社する気にはならず…雨の日専用のパンプスと決めいても、毎日のことだから変化が欲しい。「ブーツのようなスタイリッシュな長靴はないものか…」そんなわがままを社内の女の子と話していた。たまたま入ったセレクトショップ『アクアガール』で、素敵な長靴と出会い即買いしたのは去年の梅雨の話。『レジーナレジスレイン』イタリア発のレイングッズブランドだった。（画像はレジーナレジスレイン日本総代理店ピュアリーニュサイトより引用）

それから日本の老舗靴会社も次々に斬新なデザインや、カラフルでかわいらしい長靴を販売。ゴム素材のパンプスやバレリーナショーズも登場し、あっという間に女性の間に浸透した。レイングッズは昨年のヒット商品となったのだ。この冬にはファー付きの長靴まで登場し、長靴＝農作業の概念が劇的に変わった。

Other than Hokkaido, all of the Japanese archipelago experiences a season in early summer called Tsuyu where it rains almost every day. This very wet “gift from heaven” lets Japan’s agricultural industry harvest high-quality rice and vegetables.

But even if you sympathize with the farmers, it’s difficult to choose the right shoe for these rainy days. Leather shoes will lose their shape and leak, and it’s hard to take care of them. And you can’t go to work in sneakers. Many women wear rain-resistant pumps, but you’ll eventually want another pair of shoes to break up the monotony. A coworker complained to me, “Are there no stylish rain-boots that look like leather boots?” Well, by chance I found these great simple long-boots above at Aquagirl last year during Tsuyu. They are from the Italian brand Regina Regis Rain. (The image is from their Japanese partner Pure Ligne.)

These days, a lot of famed Japanese shoemakers are selling innovatively-designed and colorful rain boots. Rubber pumps and ballet shoes are catching on with Japanese women. Last year rainy-day goods were actually a very big hit. This year we’ve seen the appearance of fur-lined rain boots. Rain boots used to be seen as a shoe for farmers, but clearly, that idea has changed dramatically.

The Japanese internet’s most central meeting spot 2-Ch is going insane over the above image, captured from the March 2009 issue of gyaru fashion magazine Koakuma Ageha. The women in the picture are praying in remembrance of their beloved heroine Ai Iijima — the ex-porn star TV talent who died in somewhat mysterious circumstances last December. There may be something creepy about the religious undertones, but I don’t think there should be any surprise that Koakuma Ageha’s core readers — kyabajo (women who work at low-priced “cabaret club” hostess bars) — would hold Iijima in the highest regard.

There has been an enduring myth of Japanese fashion that all styles are completely superficial — totally unrelated to the individual’s beliefs or social status. In Style Deficit Disorder, Tiffany Godoy and Ivan Vartanian write, “The extremes to which average youth use body piercing as personal adornment have nothing to do with tribal beats, sexuality, or counter-culturalism. Here, it is pure fashion.” Now, I think this is probably true most of the time, and certainly, most Japanese also think fashion is not a deep expression of social values. But when it comes to gyaru and yankii culture, the style absolutely embodies a lifestyle not based in urban elite culture; rather it is born from social circles with lower educational attainment, lower socioeconomic background, and a non-urban upbringing. Not to say that all gyaru or Oniikei guys come from the rural working classes, but the lifestyle and its values originate from delinquent youth who lack higher education, job prospects, and urban social capital.

If you read through Koakuma Ageha closely, the “target reader” does not just aspire to be a kyabajo, but is likely to be a woman who married in her early 20s, has one or more children, got divorced at some point, and now works at a cabaret club. To women of this background, Ai Iijima makes perfect sense as a hero. Iijima suffered through a rough childhood and many years as a hostess and adult video actress, yet finally “crossed over” into mainstream society to win accolades as a prime-time celebrity. To Koakuma Ageha readers who want to find meaning and glamour in their hostess work, Iijima’s career trajectory promised a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Things sadly did not work out for Iijima in the end, but perhaps this makes her passing even more emotional for the hardcore Koakuma crowd. Her death was not just celebrity gossip, but a moment for contemplation on an entire lifestyle.

日本のネット「待ち合わせスポット」2-Chが、ギャルファッション雑誌『小悪魔ageha』に掲載された上記画像に対して何やら騒いでいる。この画像の中の女性たちが、去年亡くなった愛しい飯島愛のために祈っているらしい。まあ、宗教のように飯島愛を崇めている姿は奇妙だが、『小悪魔ageha』のコア読者になっているキャバ嬢が飯島愛を大尊敬しているということに関しては驚きはしない。

日本で洋服のスタイルは「ただのファッション」という風潮が強い。海外では洋服が個人の社会的地位や信念などを反映するのに対し、日本はあまりそれらに関係しない。パンクの格好をしている人がパンク精神なしで、老人を手伝っている場合もありますね。しかし、現在のギャルとヤンキーの場合は、「低い教育レベル、低い経済社会階級、地方出身」という環境で生じている。ギャルの全てがそうであるとはもちろん言えないが、その「スタイル」のコアになっている価値観は、都市的な主流文化以外のところに基づいて生まれた。

『小悪魔ageha』をちゃんと読むと、ターゲット読者は「キャバ嬢に憧れている子」ではなく、２０代前半で結婚し、子どもを一人・二人持ち、その後離婚を経て現在キャバ嬢として働いている人だという気がします。これらの女性たちにとっては、飯島愛が英雄になり得るのがよく分かる。飯島愛は厳しい家庭に育ち、ホステス、AV女優の時代を経験した末に、ゴールデンタイムに出演する程の人気芸能人になった。自分の「キャバ嬢ライフ」に意義を見つけたい『小悪魔ageha』の読者にとっては、飯島愛の物語に憧れを抱いている。残念だけど、最終的に飯島も悲惨な最期を遂げたが、そのニュースに最も衝撃を受けたのは小悪魔たちだったのではないだろうか。この件に関して、ただのセレブゴシップではなく、あるライフスタイルを再考する瞬間になった。

テキスタイルへの挑戦！

JFWで、神秘的な作品で観客を魅了したAGURI SAGIMORI。彼女は若干22歳の可憐な少女だ。

まだ汗ばむ陽気の10月末日、恵比寿でAGURI SAGIMORIの展示会が開かれた。コレクションテーマの「文字」を、薄いシルクのオーガンジーに染めた涙で滲んだような表情は、日本の伝統染め技法「有松絞り」の職人さんと長い月日をかけて試行錯誤を繰り返し、「嵐絞り」に辿り着いたもの。また、小説をプリントではなく難しいジャガード織りにして柄のように表現できたのも、大阪の織物屋さんの全面的な協力のおかげだと話してくれた。

そんな苦労の賜を近くで見ると、テキスタイルの細かなディテールの奥深さに感動すら覚える。読書家の彼女が表現したかった繊細な世界は、デザインはもちろん、テキスタイルへの挑戦でもあったのだ。

「私は日本の伝統工芸にこだわっていません。ただ、日本の染め物屋さん、織物屋さんの仕事の細かさや丁寧さは世界一だと思います。そのクオリティを取り入れると自ずとMade in JAPANになるだけ。これからもオリジナルのテキスタイルで作品を発表したい」。最後にこう付け加えてくれた彼女の顔は、世界を見据えた22歳の素敵な女性だった。

At the young age of 22, fashion designer Aguri Sagimori may strike some as merely a dainty young woman, but her mysterious creations continue to wow larger and larger audiences at each successive Japan Fashion Week.

I visited Sagimori’s post-show exhibition back in October. The collection theme for SS ‘09 is “words,” so she printed Japanese characters — that looked to have been blurred by tears — on thin silk organdy. She apparently spent a long time working with an artisan of the arimatsu shibori traditional Japanese dyeing technique, and after a long process of trial and error, was lead to a technique called arashi shibori (storm dyeing). She told me that she wanted to take the contents of an entire novel and print them on fabrics, but thanks to the help of an Osaka textile company, she instead was able to weave the Japanese characters as a pattern into a complicated jacquard.

When you look closely at the result of such hard work, it’s easy to be moved. The detail in the textile is so fine. Sagimori — an avid reader — really wanted to challenge herself by not just putting her world-view into the design but also the textiles.

She told us, “I am not particularly obsessed with Japanese traditional crafts. But, I believe that the intricate work of Japanese dyers and textile designers is the best in the world. It’s just that wanting to employ that level of quality means it has to be ‘Made in Japan.’ In my future shows, I want to keep presenting original textiles.”

This “dainty young woman” surely has her eyes on the world. We look forward to her upcoming JFW show on March 24.

Previously on MEKAS.: Aguri Sagimori SS 2009 Collection - Japan Fashion Week

先取りファッションは忍耐力？！

北風が吹けば体感温度5℃ぐらい？！のとにかく寒い1月中旬。

セール品が片隅に追いやられたショップ店内には早くも春服が並び、明るく爽やかな軽い雰囲気につい吸い込まれそうになる。が…外は真冬。街ゆく人もコートやダウン・ロングブーツで寒さから身を守っていた。そんな中、春をファッションに取り入れる際に考えることといったら…コートのインナーに明るい色のセーターや薄手素材の重ね着など、とにかく温かい工夫をしそうなものだ。

しかし、私が多く目撃した若い女性はちょっと違う。オシャレは足もとから？！。タイツやソックスを履かずに、素足にパンプスのコーディネイト。我慢大会さながらの無理をしているようにしか見えないけど、真冬の素肌はとても新鮮で重い色のコーディネイトを軽く見せる効果がある。

不況が不安をあおる中、ファッションにお金をかけられない若者が春を先取りする発想。それは忍耐力の一言に尽きるかもしれない。

Is being ahead of the fashion curve all about perseverance?

Mid-January in Tokyo is pretty cold. When the northern winds blow, it feels like 5˚C.

In a lot of shops, all the sale-price goods are already being pushed into a corner, and they’re lining up products from the spring collection. It’s easy to get sucked into the new products’ bright and refreshing vibe. But, c’mon, it’s the dead of winter outside. Everyone on the streets is protecting themselves from the cold with down coats and long boots. To use any of these spring items right now means doing it in a warm way, like maybe wearing light fabrics or brightly-colored sweaters under a coat.

This, however, is not the approach I see most young women doing on the street. They say style these days is all about leg-wear, but so many girls now coordinate their pumps with bare feet — no tights, no socks. It looks like they are in some epic struggle to see who can endure the most cold. But actually, the “bare skin in mid-winter” style looks pretty fresh. It lightens up an otherwise heavy-colored winter wardrobe.

As the recession heightens anxieties, I guess this is what the kids came up with as a way to start using spring fashion without spending any money. The whole thing’s come down to endurance.

I am surely late to notice this, but JJ suddenly is a lot less CanCam and a whole lot more ViVi.

Maybe I base my categorizations too much on historical pedigree, but I always saw JJ as one of the canonical Oneekei titles, alongside CanCam and Ray. These days, however, the magazine has been drifting away from its former combination of classic “good girl” OL (office lady) style and a slightly loud moneyed look. What made me finally notice the change? The sudden abundance of half-Japanese models? The new-found obsession with Hollywood celebrities? The wholehearted embrace of wearing all black?

Thanks to Ebi-chan, CanCam was able to steal a lot of JJ’s thunder over the last five years, so I can see why Kobunsha are looking for a new brand position. Or perhaps, the whole “mote-kei” — dressing specifically to meet boys — has lost its appeal and girls are more interested in the girl-empowerment that ViVi tends to represent. JJ still preaches a proper dress code and offers kimawashi (revolving wardrobe) tips to OLs, but the magazine seems suddenly inclusive to more casual and garish items. JJ even has a “foreign girls street snap” section, which is closer to high-fashion Spur than to the domestic-obsessed CanCam.

JJ is still pretty free of “rock” influence though, so good to see them keep close to their roots.

気ついたのはかなり遅くなってからだけど、最近JJは、CanCamっぽさが無くなってViViのスタイルに近づいている。

頭の中でカテゴリ分けする時に、雑誌の歴史的な背景を考えすぎるのかもしれないが、JJはCanCamとRayと「お姉系三頭政治」の一つだと思っていた。でも近頃は、「いい子」OL系と派手なお金持ち系の統合スタイルから離れている気がする。なぜ今その事に気付いたのだろう？ハーフモデルの急激な増加によるものか?それともハリウッド・セレブに対する極端な関心が生まれたからか？もしくは全身黒一色の着こなしが受け入れられているからなのか？

エビちゃんの活躍によって、CanCamが過去五年間でJJのお株を奪ったことを考えると、光文社には新しいブランド・ポシションが必要になったことが分かる。でも、もしかしたら男に好かれる服を着るいわゆる「モテ系」の時代が終わったかもしれない。そして「ガールズ・パワー」を象徴しているViViのほうが好まれる時代になったのだろう。もちろんJJはまだ正統派「OLドレスコード」や、オフィスで着回しをするよう仕向けているが、前よりもカジュアルで派手な柄のものが多くなっているように感じる。また、外国人女性のストリートスナップも展開していて、国内以外に興味のないCanCamよりも、ハイファッションのSpurに近い感じだ。

まあ、JJはまだ”ロック”の影響はゼロに近いから、本質からそこまで逃げなくてよかったと思う。