Style City

Ahead of speaking at the Club this month, British author Philomena Keet explains how Japan inspired two books, The Tokyo Look Book and Tokyo Fashion City.

People sometimes say that academics ultimately study themselves. In my case, this turned out to be scarily accurate, although I didn’t appreciate it when I embarked on my doctorate in social anthropology with a focus on Tokyo street fashion. Looking back, I realize I have had a particularly involved relationship with my clothes.

As a young girl, I was immaculately clothed by my mother, whose own inimitable style led to my being clad in some of the finest clothes London shops had to offer small girls in the ’80s. But there were disappointments, too, such as the sparkly ballet flats my mother refused to buy and, later on, the frumpy clothes I was cajoled into for Christmas parties and other occasions.

My experimenting began at school, applying slightly eccentric modifications to my traditional, strictly enforced uniform like T-Bar Dr Marten school shoes and a Hello Kitty sticker over my prefect’s badge. Embracing the sartorial freedom of university, I adopted a subcultural, grungy look.

I have matured my style since then, and I have inherited my mother’s tendency to coordinate outfits, from shoes to bags to earrings. A former colleague at a part-time job once commented that my obsession with matching was probably why I was studying Japan’s unfathomable fashionistas and their mix-and-match approach to style.

My interest in Japanese fashion began during my two years in Osaka. Out of curiosity, I went to a huge “visual kei” concert. I was gobsmacked at the outrageous costumes of the audience, including some bizarre, Lolita- and goth-inspired reincarnations of Marie Antoinette. It was my first experience of cosplay that wasn’t related to anime movies or manga comics.

Fruits is a Japanese fashion magazine, established in the 1990s, that showcases Harajuku fashion in all its eye-popping creativity and originality. This publication became central to my thesis, and much of my fieldwork was spent “hunting” fashionistas with one of the magazine’s photographers.

My other insight into this subculture was while working at an underground shop in Shibuya, where my colleagues dressed me in various outré garments, including, memorably, a skirt made from a military parachute, replete with cords.

One of the defining characteristics of Japanese fashion is its diversity of styles, or kei, from the frills of Lolita kei and its many subdivisions, via the extremes of gyaru (girl) fashion, such as the dark-skinned and panda-eyed yamanba, to the street fashionistas, whose extravagantly creative outfits seem to have no common thread.

Unlike Europe and America, Japan is not bogged down in centuries of sartorial social rules (Western clothing was only adopted here in the early 20th century), allowing for unrestrained fashion experimentation and exploration.

Meet the Author: Philomena Keet
Mar 29 | 7–8pm

Words: Philomena Keet
Image: Kayo Yamawaki