Harajuku fashion: a street style, culture and aesthetic

Are you a fashion lover? If the answer is yes, without a doubt Harajuku is your place!

In recent years Harajuku has become the fashionable district of Tokyo and its streets have become true fashion catwalks where many different styles coexist.

And, Harajuku is known as the center of adolescent culture since it is where you can find famous clubs, art galleries, studios, and all this, with a unique and different style.

What is Harajuku fashion?

As in many places, Japan’s youth fashion has undergone thousands of changes over the past three decades. Still, two major trends that have been the most can be highlighted as representative of Harajuku fashion since the late 80’s and early 90’s: eccentric pop fashion and Lolita fashion.

Specifically, the eccentric pop fashion is one of the most popular Harajuku and it consists of clothing pastel or neon unusual and totally unexpected accessories such as tiaras flamingo, backpacks shaped seashell…

This fashion applies to both women and men and there is only one basic principle for Harajuku fashion and that is expression through clothing and accessories. The style itself is born between the streets of the district and is that in many of the cities of Tokyo we can find different urban tribes that have their own rules when dressing.

Harajuku style and its most famous outfits

One of the most important factors of this type of fashion is that young people care about what is commonly known as mainstream fashion, common and current, but they want to break with these established fashions and go much further because the important thing is freedom of expression through style.

In this way, Harajuku fashion has emerged as a movement against the pressure to fit in as it invites freedom of expression both in thought and in what you wear and to wear whatever you want, regardless of clothing or style, or gender.

Harajuku style is characterized by the mixture of totally opposite styles, colors and patterns. For example, punk-style garments can be mixed with a school uniform or even a kimono with quirky accessories.

In addition, it is a style where dressing with many layers predominates, that is, you can put a dress over a shirt with pants and include a sweatshirt or jacket to the look.

On the other hand, they also stand out for being a style where the concept of “do it yourself” predominates, this means that many of the clothes they wear are often customized by themselves, thus adding a personal touch to their own garments.

As we have mentioned, Harajuku fashion is characterized by the abundance of brightly colored accessories that, like other garments, do not have to be combined with the rest of the clothes.

Finally, Harajuku also goes to extremes in makeup and hairstyle.

Harajuku girls and her unique aesthetic

Within Japanese Harajuku fashion we can find different subgroups that are also iconic within fashion.

Lolita

This is one of the best-known styles and also one of the easiest to recognize, as it is characterized by introducing Gothic style garments mixed with Victorian-style clothing and baroque elements.

They mostly use dark colors, corsets and knee-high socks. An important characteristic to highlight of the Lolita girls is the importance that they attribute to the hair and its decoration. In this way, you can see hair tones of infinite colors, headdresses, hats, and more!

Kawaii

This type of style is characterized above all by pink lace or tulle skirts. It is usually associated with a very feminine dress and can even reflect an attitude feminine since precisely “kawaii” in Japanese means “tender” and it is precisely what they try to reflect with this type of clothing.

As a consequence of this, in kawaii style are often mixed the concepts of beauty and innocence with the aesthetics that dolls have and some characters such as Hello Kitty.

Kangaroo

This Harajuku fashion was born in the 90s since all the girls wanted to look like other California girls. This concept literally means “black face” in Japanese and it is for this reason that they have a very exaggerated tan, specifically this is their hallmark.

Also, they stand out for their extravagant wigs and for they usually wear white eyelids and a very marked outline.

In terms of clothing, they stand out above all for wearing garments in very bright and fluorescent colors.

Decorate

This style is one of the most extravagant out there. It is a style very similar to the Kawaii commenting above, although it adorns the whole look with a large number of hair accessories.

These accessories are used in hair, clothing, shoes, bags, backpacks, cell phones and everything that can be attached to a sticker. It is common to see girls with dyed hair or wearing wigs in fantasy colors.

Why is Harajuku fashion so well-known around the world?

Harajuku fashion is known worldwide for all the diversity that this type of clothing offers. Anyone who wants to enjoy and experiment with fashion can wear and include garments of this style in their wardrobe.

Although many of the Harajuku styles can include traditional elements such as kimonos or a series of accessories, more and more they introduce groundbreaking and current elements such as piercings, sneakers with high platforms, colored contact lenses…

And this is because there are many styles of fashion and culture in Tokyo and these tend to change very quickly, which causes many of them to also have elements in common.