Since the 1980s, Tokyo has been the focal point of almost every new fashion and cultural trend to develop in Japan. As the world’s largest city, Tokyo’s dozens of unique districts and neighborhoods have been home to some of the most distinctive new forms of creativity and expression ever seen in the fashion industry.
Many people think of Tokyo fashion trends and assume they will find a wide array of outlandish designs and styles typical of the images they see in magazines and travelers’ books. While certain parts of Tokyo have become famous for outlandish colors and combinations of various styles, other styles and trends are much more traditional or built on existing Western styles.
Japanese Fashion Trends Explained
Gyaru
When most people think of outlandish Japanese fashion, they envision Gyaru trends. Literally meaning “gal” in Japanese, Gyaru refers to the legions of young teenage (and early 20s) girls who take to the streets of Omotesando and Aoyama wearing incredibly expressive fashions.
Harajuku’s crowded streets are often a source of these trends, and magazines like Egg are usually read by their practitioners. There are various ways Gyaru girls dress and make themselves up. Still, the most commonly referenced is Ganguro, in which incredibly dark fake tans are applied with bronzer and tanning equipment to darken the skin. White makeup and bleached hair contrast with the darkened skin, and expressive, bright clothing is often worn in conjunction.
Other Gyaru styles include B-Gyaru, in which young women dress to look like popular overseas R&B artists, and Himegyaru, in which young women wear bright pink makeup, long eyelashes, and huge, bouffant hairstyles, with expressive, almost gothic-style dresses and bows. Another common term used to describe some Gyaru trends is Kogal – often referring to young women who alter their skin and hair color while constantly striving to maintain a “cute” look with trendy new clothing.
Yamanba is another popular derivative of the Gyaru style that features excessive makeup, stickers of cartoon characters, and a lot of fake jewelry and brightly colored clothing. Ganguro makeup is often applied, and hair extensions are frequently added.
Onii-Kei
This popular Tokyo fashion trend refers to a way many young Japanese males dress, combining “ame-kaji” (American Casual) and “ita-kaji” (Italian Casual) with a Japanese sense of rock and glam. Usually, men who follow this fashion trend are interested in acquiring the newest and most fashionable label products and are very much into accessories such as belts, watches, sunglasses, and pouches from those brands. A popular hairstyle for Onii-kei style men is the “Wolf Hair” style, which is essentially a loose, shaggy haircut with gelled, teased ends.
Onee-kei is the female form of this style, which originated in the mid-1990s when women in Shibuya began growing out of the Gyaru styles they wore and adopting more adult-looking body dresses and clothing. Today, Onii-kei can range from a more military style in the Ame-kaji tradition to a more European, suit-and-tie style in the Ita-kaji tradition.
Lolita Style
The Lolita style started in the 1970s with the advent of brands like Angelic Pretty in Tokyo and has grown exponentially in the 1990s and 2000s with the development of publications such as the Gothic-Lolita Bible, which showcases numerous new Lolita styles and trends that quickly spread throughout Japan (and now North America and Europe with recent translations).
The style itself combines 19th-century Victorian and Edwardian clothing and makeup that closely mimics the appearance of popular porcelain dolls. Young women and teenagers will wear colorful lace dresses and accessorize with a variety of items, such as bonnets, shoes, socks, and ribbons. Additional touches can include dyed hair and even colored contact lenses to appear more like the Victorian dolls.
Variations in the style’s inspiration have included special backpacks, slightly less innocent imagery, and a more gothic bent. Recent designers like H.Naoto have taken the trend in the complete opposite direction, nearly completely abandoning the cuteness of the Lolita in favor of the grit in the Gothic. However, most clothing bought and worn in Tokyo streets tends to be a mixture of the two.
Decora Style
Made famous by fashion magazines like Fruits (and often called Fruits-style as a result), Decora is short for “Decoration”, a Tokyo street fashion that involves wearing as much colorful clothing and as many colorful accessories as possible. The clothing itself will often be overshadowed by the sheer weight and volume of the accessories, including everything from plastic toys and jewelry to feather boas, wings, thick boots, and extra pairs of socks.
Japanese Streetwear
Streetwear is a general term that has come to define several developing fashion trends in Tokyo. Generally, the style refers to those who draw inspiration from overseas Hip hop and R&B cultures, as well as those in Japan. Designer sneakers, military-inspired jackets, and screen-printed t-shirts are often common aspects of this style. However, there are multiple derivatives of it as well.
Punk has a significant influence on most Tokyo streetwear, including the advent of the screen-printed t-shirt and the slim-legged denim, which has become famous in Japan and around the world for its original, handmade ingredients and sources.
Skateboarding culture is another significant influence on streetwear, as seen in the massive array of sneaker brands and styles available in Tokyo and throughout Japan.
Tokyo’s Trend-Setting Ways
For two decades, Tokyo’s streets have been a showcase for new fashions and trends to emerge. These trends are often the seeds of what Japan will be wearing in months or years to come and have intrigued visitors, celebrities, and fashion personalities from around the world. If one wants to know what the next likely street or youth fashion trends might be in two or three years, often they need only look to Tokyo.
