Japanese Subculture: Kogals and Lolitas, Rebellion or Fashion
Blog Post: Japanese subcultures: Rebellion vs. Cool; Lifestyle vs. Fashion Currently, Japan remains one of the most homogenous countries in the world with almost ninety nine percent of its population...
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Takashi Murakami & Louis Vuitton: Superflat meets Superfashion
When these two giants met, things went wild. The first collection of bags Murakami designed for the fashion house (at the order of creative director, Marc Jacobs) rejuvenated the brand–Louis Vuitton...
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Pop Psychosis: the Influence of the Bomb on Superflat Art
Murakami Takashi, "Gero-Tan" "I express hopelessness." In the past several decades, Japanese popular culture has become inundated with a “cute” or kawaii aesthetic that is unique to the country. This...
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Standing Out and Fitting In: Street Fashion and the Search for Identity and...
by Tori Szczesniak Fashion is the means of expressing identity. Dressing is a ritualistic, symbolic, everyday practice that we use to situate ourselves in the chaotic, judgmental world around us. The...
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Ura-Hara Street Clothing: The Rise of the Japanese Fashion Otaku
Many would be surprised to hear that at one point in time, Japan was quite possibly the world’s largest consumer of luxury goods. In 2008, the French luxury goods conglomerate, Moët Hennessy Louis...
View ArticleLoose Socks as Molotov Cocktails: Finding the Rebellion in Japanese Teen Girl...
[[Show as slideshow]] [[Show as slideshow]] Within examinations of Japanese girls’ culture, there lies a wide gap between a perception of traditional subcultures as docile, meaningless cultural...
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Sacai: Fighting Fashion’s Western Dominance
by: Brooke LaRue In 1999, Chitose Abe, a former design team member at Comme des Garçon, founded her own Tokyo based label, Sacai. Since then she has worked as creative director, maintaining full...
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Cosplay Culture: A Study in Transculturation Gone Wrong?
By Victoria Mikolaski Cosplay is a word that is becoming more well-known everyday with the exponentially increasing interest in everything that has to do with popular entertainment nowadays. The...
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Springing Upright: Aesthetically Coping with Catastrophe in Postwar Japan
“The winds may fell the massive oak, but bamboo, bent even to the ground, will spring upright after the passage of the storm.” Thus reads a Japanese proverb that likely stems from the country’s long...
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