Harajuku Fashion is Dead
By Hannah Schmidt-Rees
It's hard to find someone who hasn't heard of or even seen Harajuku fashion. It's practically become synonymous with Japanese culture at this point, an eye-catching postcard for everything Japan has to offer. In the 1990s, Harajuku was the centrepoint for Japanese fashion, a frenetic hub of inspiration and boundary-pushing, until it's slow and painful death in the past few years.
As much as I hate to admit it, Harajuku fashion is dead.
Harajuku became the fashion 'capital' in the 1980s, as it was favoured by the youths who would gather there every Sunday. Many roads in Harajuku were closed to traffic on Sundays, allowing visitors and locals to mingle and interact. In case you're not aware, Harajuku fashion is not a specific look, it's a combination of multiple fashion genres, with the main goal to dress without judgement and limits; lolita, visual kei, gyaru, loligoth are popular examples. It's the use of fashion to be bold, to express yourself, be unconventional, anything but mainstream.
Japan is known for it's rigidity; there is a uniform for everything, a set of rules to always live under. Restriction births resistance, without the strict rules of Japanese culture, we would not have the strict rulebreakers who create and curate what makes fashion truly special. Yes, its colourful and bold, but it’s a major way to explore subversion and resistance. It may just be clothing, but it may be a way to connect, inspire and influence.
The most well-known showcase of Harajuku fashion was the magazine FRUiTS, run by Aoki Shoichi. It recorded the fashion of Harajuku as it was, a monthly time-capsule for fashion and Japanese youth culture, starting in 1997. It was essentially the only was for Harajuku fashion to reach the rest of the world, becoming the most respected Japanese street fashion magazine in the world. Every photo had a description of the outfit, where is was from, the inspiration and the additional information about the person wearing the clothes.
“Fashion is an act of self-expression, linked to the foundation of humanity. It is as important as art, music and literature. And when I say ‘fashion’ I don’t mean ‘fashion business’.”
"There are no more cool kids left to photograph." FRUiTS shut down in 2017, there simply wasn't content that fit the standard of Harajuku fashion anymore. Either there wasn't anyone who dressed in the same bold way, or if anything, they weren't in Harajuku anymore. Traffic was allowed back on the streets, and with that the intimate nature of Harajuku was gone, no longer a ‘pedestrian paradise’. Fast fashion retailers like Uniqlo moved in, and the globalisation of Japan overwhelmed the area with tourist traps and commercialisation. Social media also plays its part (as it always does), diluting fashion influence with so many different ideas that there's essentially nothing left to really focus on.
In my opinion, creativity is born through a lack of influence. In a way, the grass is greener on the other side, our ambition to create is born from not already having something created for us. These 'cool kids' had the opportunity to create and wear whatever they wanted; they didn’t have social media or mass-market brands to influence them. They relied on each other, they relied on their own creativity and will to break the rules and expectations. In any case, fashion subcultures are about belonging; providing a space for individuals to belong, meet others with similar interests and find respect and camaraderie. At the height of Harajuku fashion, the internet did not exist, magazies like FRUiTS the most social media-esc influence at the time. It's hard to engage in a fashion subculture as a lifestyle when we receive so many influences from other sources. There's less investment on many levels, there feels like there's less to prove.
Harajuku fashion is not dead. I might've been too harsh at the start. It's simply, evolving. It will never be the same as it was, but that doesn't mean that I will never have the same impact. We live in unprecedented times, change is not always a bad thing, there are always rules to break, connections to make and things to discover. Fashion is unpredictable, it is what it is. It’s easy to miss the eclectic and groundbreaking nature of the 90s Harajuku fashion though.