Street Punk Fashion Scene in Japan

Street Fashion Scene in Japan

Bored with name-brand mania, young people patronize “selecto shops” and indie shops with clothes by local street designers. They are sometimes called the “Purikura” generation after the popular photo vending machines.

Japan has a very lively teenage street fashion scene. Great attention is paid to the latest trends and fashion. Posing and ogling over other's clothes are popular pastimes. The Harajuku, Ebisu, Daikanyama and Shibuya districts in Tokyo are particularly known as places where young Japanese come to see and be seen and check out the latest fashion and trends.

Harajuku in Tokyo is regarded as groubd zero for Japanese street fashion and kawaii culture. It has always been a place where people prefer not to wear the same things as others. Takamasa Sakurai wrote in The Daily Yomiuri, “Views toward young people's fashion are surprisingly conservative in other countries. I talked with a lot of young women in cities like Paris, New York and Milan, and found they don't think their local towns are fashionable. So which place do they think is fashionable? Harajuku.”

Rebecca Mead wrote in the New Yorker, “One of the striking things about spending any time among fashion-conscious Japanese kids is how utterly nerdy they can be in their pursuit of cool...The right T-shirt of cap is sought with the kind of dogged intensity, and not by a fringe group or fanatics. Japanese boys in particular seem to treat fashion in a manner appropriate to stamp collecting or train spotting.”

The street fashion scene in Tokyo is so lively that French Japanese fashion houses have consultants and cool hunters roaming trendy neighborhoods and shops looking fashions and trends that could translate into fashion with world wide appeal.

Harajuku is a neighborhood in Tokyo popular with fashion-conscious teenagers, who tend to congregate around the record stores and clothing shop. The pedestrian overpass from Harajuku station to Meiji Shrine and the narrow alley of Takeshita Dori is favorite gathering place for young Japanese who like to dress in outrageous costumes (a practice known as cos-play) and draw attention to themselves.

Harajuku a been known as an epicenter of Japanese fashion since the 1970s and the crossing of Meiji-do and Omotesandi is regarded as ground zero. Trend over the years have included An/Non0zuka (a “tribe” of young girls with fashion magazines in hand) and Takenko-zoku (young people who performed distinctive dances wearing distinctive, colorful clothing. Today it is crowded on the weekends with Goths, Lolitas, Gothic-Lolitas and visual-kei—flashy boys with strange haircuts.