Japanese Teens as Producers of

Street Fashion
Yuniya Kawamura
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
CS

abstract: This study is a macro-sociological analysis of the social organization of

Japanese street fashion and a micro-interactionist analysis of teen consumers who
form various subcultures. These subcultures directly and indirectly dictate fashion
trends. The present study shows the interdependence in the production process
of fashion between institutions within the industries and the Japanese teens. Street
fashion in the fashionable districts of Tokyo, such as Harajuku and Shibuya, is
independent of any mainstream fashion system and goes beyond the conventional
model of fashion business with different marketing strategies and occupational
categories. This article shows that fashion is no longer controlled or guided by
professionally trained designers but by the teens who have become the producers
of fashion.

keywords: fashion ✦ Japanese ✦ street ✦ subculture

Introduction
Japanese fashion has inspired many fashion professionals in the West,
starting with Kenzo Takada’s appearance in Paris in 1970 followed by
Issey Miyake in 1973, Hanae Mori in 1977, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei
Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 1981. Japan is gradually becoming
a country that is a genuine force in the field of fashion. Today’s Japanese
fashion contributes both to the aesthetics of fashion as well as to how
business is made in this industry. The traditional western view of Japanese
style, such as boringly suited salesmen and their demurely dressed wives,
is turned upside down when we see the range of styles worn by the young
people on the street of Tokyo (Polhemus, 1996: 12).
Japanese street fashion does not come from the famous professional
Japanese designers, but is led by high school girls who have become
extremely influential in controlling fashion trends. These fashion-
conscious, or fashion-obsessed, youngsters indirectly and directly dictate
this type of Japanese fashion. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are

Current Sociology ✦ September 2006 ✦ Vol 54(5): 784–801

© International Sociological Association
SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392106066816

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the agents of fashion, who take part in the production and dissemination
of fashion. Japanese street fashion emerges out of the social networks
among different institutions of fashion as well as various street subcul-
tures, each of which is identified with a unique and original look. These
teens rely on a distinctive appearance to proclaim their symbolic, subcul-
tural identity. This identity is not political or ideological; it is simply inno-
vative fashion that determines their group affiliation.
While many fashionable Japanese consumers simply imitate western
styles, the teens have led the way in a creative mixing and matching of
contrasting eclectic styles that has been extensively copied in the West
(Polhemus, 1996: 12). Similarly, many apparel manufacturers and retail-
ers from neighboring Asian countries, such as Korea and Taiwan, visit
Tokyo in search of new ideas, and that is why knockoffs are found
throughout Asia. A buyer from Hong Kong explained: ‘Telling a teen
customer that an item is popular in Japan is a big selling point in Hong
Kong. That’s why it’s important for us to know what is going on in Tokyo.
I’m here every three months to catch up with the latest trends.’
The most recent fashion phenomenon in Japan goes beyond the conven-
tional model of fashion business. Over the past 10 years, a separate system
of fashion with a new business model has been created in Japan in order
to commercialize street fashion and boost the market. In this new model,
occupational categories within various institutions of fashion are blurry,
and the model also supports the trickle-up/bubble-up or trickle-across
theory of fashion that Herbert Blumer proposed in 1969.
I use Diana Crane’s theoretical as well as analytical framework of the
postmodern culture of fashion, in which the emphasis is placed on
consumer fashion rather than class fashion postulated by the classic
writers such as Georg Simmel (1957), Herbert Spencer (1966), and
Thorstein Veblen (1957). According to Crane (2000), the consumption of
cultural goods, such as fashionable clothing, performs an increasingly
important role in the construction of personal identity, and the variety of
lifestyles available today liberates the individuals, especially the young-
sters, from tradition and enables them to make choices that create a mean-
ingful self-identity. Like Crane, Fred Davis (1992) also points out the
ambivalent nature of identity and fashion.
This article attempts to show the interdependence in the production of
fashion between various institutions of fashion within the industries and
the Japanese teens. I first discuss the social and economic background of
Japan that explains the emergence of the Kogal phenomenon and the CosPlay
movement. Then I investigate the teens’ role as the producers of fashion in
two major districts in Tokyo, Shibuya and Harajuku, that led to the forma-
tion of a new business model and a system that is independent of the main-
stream fashion system with specific marketing and diffusion strategies.

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Methodology
This study is a macro-sociological analysis of the social organization of
fashion, street fashion in particular, and a micro-interactionist analysis of
teens who form and belong to various subcultures. The relationship
between the social structure of street fashion and the individuals involved
can be observed.
Subcultures can best be studied by an ethnographic method, as a
researcher can get close to the empirical social world and dig deep into
it through face-to-face communication and interaction with the research
subjects. I combined direct observation, both participant and non-partici-
pant, with structured and semi-structured interviews to become familiar
with this world.
I take a symbolic interactionist approach to understand the communi-
cation process between the teenagers as it is an inductive approach to the
understanding of human behavior, in which explanations are induced
from data. As Herbert Blumer (1969) explained, the scientific approach of
symbolic interactionism starts with a problem regarding the empirical
world, and it seeks to clarify the problem by examining that empirical
world. It does not begin with a set of hypotheses but looks at the processes
by which individuals define the world from the inside and at the same
time identify their world of objects.
My research data come primarily from an ethnographic study in
Shibuya and Harajuku, two of the most fashionable districts in Tokyo,
where street culture or subculture is found and from where the latest street
fashion originates. Shibuya 109 Department Store is the symbol of Shibuya
where the latest street fashion items are found, while Harajuku is famous
for its back streets, known as Ura-Hara, with small boutiques selling
exclusive items in limited quantities. During January 2005, I visited these
two places every Sunday to get to know mainly teenage girls, and between
June and August 2005, interviewed them formally and informally. I
carried out 21 interviews with manufacturers, retailers, designers and
salesgirls, who are involved in commercializing, marketing and distrib-
uting Japanese street fashion.

Social and Economic Backdrops of Japanese

Street Culture
Before I begin to discuss street fashion and subcultures in Tokyo, I explain
the social and economic situations behind this phenomenon as fashion is
always connected to and is never independent of its social, cultural and
economic surroundings.
After the tremendous economic prosperity of the 1980s, Japan’s economic

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bubble burst, and the country has since experienced their worst and longest
economic recession. Japanese society is famously cohesive and conformist,
but as John Nathan (2004) argues, this may be cracking under the strain of
economic stagnation. Fathers are being laid off for the first time; mothers
who used to be full-time homemakers, now have to look for part-time jobs
to supplement their household income; children find no hope in the Japan
of the future, and violence in schools has risen dramatically. Since 1998,
teens aged between 14 and 19 have been involved in 50 percent of all arrest
for felonies, including murder (Nathan, 2004). There is a widespread feeling
of disillusionment, alienation, uncertainty or anger that has spread
throughout the society, among both adults and children. The traditional
family, social and economic systems have gradually become weaker.
The Japanese value system, especially that of the teens, is changing. The
previous generation’s traditional Japanese beliefs, such as selfless
devotion to their employers, respect for seniors and perseverance, are
losing their force (Ijiri, 1990). An intentional shift away from old ideology
and ways of life is evident in today’s Japan. Fashion expresses the prevail-
ing ideology of society, and these teens see the assertion of individual
identity as more important and meaningful than that of group identity,
which used to be the key concept in Japanese culture. Such attitudes are
reflected in their norm-breaking and outrageous, yet commercially
successful, attention-grabbing styles. Dick Hebdige (1988: 35) accurately
pointed out that subcultures are formed in the space between surveillance
and the evasion of surveillance; they translate the fact of being under
scrutiny into the pleasure of being watched.
Therefore, it may seem ironic, but it is under these social and economic
conditions that Japanese street fashion became increasingly creative and
innovative, as if the teens wanted to challenge and redefine the existing
notion of what is fashionable and aesthetic. They went against the grain
of the normative standard of fashion. The teens are in search of their
identity and a community where they feel that they are accepted.

Female-Dominated Japanese Subcultures

While Hebdige (1988: 27) explained that girls have been relegated to a
position of secondary interest within both sociological accounts of
subculture and photographic studies of urban youth, and though they
still show masculine bias, it is the girls who play a major role in Japanese
subcultures.
Japanese girls are always shopping, and they spend a great deal of their
capital on clothes and makeup. Fashion is of the utmost importance for
them because they want to stand out and be noticed. Some also wish to
rebel against the formal and traditional ways. They tend to hang out in

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large groups around train stations chatting. These teens are sometimes
treated as deviants by the rest of Japanese society. By hanging out with
peers who dress in the same style they can bond with each other.

The Kogal Phenomenon since 1995

Japan’s distinctive street fashion began to creep up in the mid-1990s in
urban Japan by young teenage girls known as Kogal.1 They are known for
wearing short plaid skirts that look like their own school uniforms and
knee-high white socks, and they occasionally use a lot of makeup and arti-
ficial suntans. Their effects and influence extended far beyond a particu-
lar subculture. This group consequently redefined sartorial and sexual
norms and was generally associated with a minority of social dropouts.
For the majority of the teens, their life centres round the Shibuya train
station. This group unintentionally created a subculture. The first street
subculture that appeared in the 1990s and that helped fuel the industry is
known as Ganguro (literally means ‘black face’). A common sight on the
streets of Tokyo at the time was groups of young girls between the ages
of 15 and 18 with long dyed-brown or bleached-blond hair, tanned skin,
heavy makeup, brightly coloured miniskirts or short pants that flare out
at the bottom, and high platform boots. A designer who used to be Ganguro
said: ‘I was a hardcore Ganguro when I was in high school. I had to be.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be accepted by other kids. I would be totally out of
place if I looked normal. We all want to fit in when we are teenagers.’
Ganguro led to Amazoness, which was more extreme than Ganguro, but
according to some industry professionals, it was probably too extreme to
last long. Instead, in the late 1990s, Yamamba (the term comes from
Japanese mythology and refers to a mountain witch) as another fashion
trend and a subculture emerged to replace the Ganguro look. More
recently, Yamamba evolved into Mamba, which is already beginning to
fade. There are multiple interactions occurring simultaneously on the
streets of Tokyo, and the subcultures and their specific appearances have
branched out in so many different sub-subcultures that it is almost
impossible to track down all the existing groups.

Street Fashion as Symbolic Group Identity

The distinctive looks function as a visible group identity for the teens and
become shared symbols of membership affiliation. A symbol is the vehicle
by which humans communicate their ideas, intentions, purposes and
thoughts, i.e. their mental lives, to one another. The teens are almost
uniformly aware of all of their communication, which utilizes symbols
that vary in the degree to which meanings are shared and intended. There-
fore, these styles are functional and meaningful only within the specific
territory of Harajuku and Shibuya among particular groups of people.

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Figure 1

I approached one of the girls in Shibuya and asked her: ‘Are you a
Mamba?’ She replied to me: ‘No, I’m a Celemba.’ I asked the difference
between a Mamba and a Celemba. Celemba is a combination of a celebrity
look and a Mamba. The Celembas tend to wear expensive brands while the
Mambas do not. The Mambas use white eyeshadow around the eyes but
the Celembas use silver instead. As for fashion, the Celembas look more
mature and sophisticated and always have a scarf or a shawl around their
neck. There is another group called Lomamba, that is a Mamba with a Lolita
touch, and the label they wear must be LizLisa. Furthermore, Cocomba is
someone who covers herself with the brand Cocolulu sold in Shibuya
(Figure 1). One girl said: ‘There are so many girls who are only partially
Mamba, and they are not authentic Mambas.’ Authenticity appears to be
important, and only the insiders can tell the difference between what is
real and what is not.

Teens’ Role as Producers of Fashion in

Shibuya and Harajuku
When a fashion trend hits Japan, it spreads very fast and becomes
universal, and almost everyone will be wearing it. This is a phenomenon

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that is unique to the homogeneous Japanese society and rarely found in

other societies.
One of the first trends that the teens started was probably the loose
white socks that became the rage among the high school girls in 1993.
These are long, white pairs of loose, baggy knee socks deliberately pushed
down to the shin like leg warmers. Many teens have their own style of
wearing the loose socks. They know how high the top part of the socks
should be to achieve the right amount of wrinkle on the legs. Some like
the socks to be as long as a yard. By 1996, there were as many as 35 differ-
ent types of loose socks sold in stores. A girl who just graduated from
high school said: ‘These loose socks look stylish. They make your legs
look longer. If you didn’t have them, it was really embarrassing.’
Therefore, the loose socks have been a necessary item for junior and
high school girls. The trend is not as strong as it once was in Tokyo, but
it is still popular in the suburbs and smaller towns. The product was not
marketed by fashion professionals but the teens themselves. This is when
the fashion industry began to realize the marketing potential of the teens,
and the trends that they promote to their friends are independent of and
go against the grain of the mainstream fashion.

Salesgirls as Designers and Merchandisers in Shibuya 109

Shibuya 109 (pronounced as Shibuya Ichi-Maru-Kyu or Shibuya Maru-
Kyu) Department Store is the symbol of Shibuya district and Japanese
girls’ culture and is known as the mecca of street fashion. There is a collec-
tion of stores that cater to Japanese teens, and more than a hundred stores
are located on 10 different floors. They sell new, hip and inexpensive
clothes, accessories and jewelry. This is where the most fashionable sales-
girls work.
To work as a salesperson in a boutique is not a high-paid job, and many
are also hired as part-time workers. Its position in the occupational
ranking is rather low as it requires neither license nor special qualifica-
tions. A salesperson is someone at the cash register who puts merchan-
dise in a shopping bag. She is usually not that well educated and does
not come from a wealthy family. However, this notion is completely
reversed, especially among the teens, in some spheres of today’s Japan.
One of the girls who was shopping in Shibuya explains how difficult it
is to get one of these positions: ‘It’s really difficult to work in the Shibuya
109 building as a salesgirl, you know. It’s competitive to get that position.
You should go to the store every Saturday and Sunday and become friends
with the salesgirls. Then when there is a position available, they might
call you if you have the right look. But the waiting list is really long.’
In many of the stores in the 109 Department Store, the salesgirls are so
influential in setting the new trends that the teens would buy the exact

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same outfit that the salesgirl is wearing. They are no longer merely selling
clothes but contribute to the buying of merchandise and designing for the
store labels. They have first-hand knowledge of the kind of tastes the teens
have and what garments and accessories they are looking for. They have
acquired this knowledge because of their direct day-to-day contact with
the teen consumers. The salesgirls themselves become icons, known as
karisuma tenin, literally translated as charismatic salesgirls. They have
created their own website and give advice to their followers about how
to coordinate the latest items. A salesgirl who once worked in the 109
store said: ‘In our store, there was a monthly theme, and we salesgirls
would dress according to the theme. Many customers would purchase
the items that I used to wear. They believed that I was the fashion leader
so as long as they dressed like me, they would be considered fashionable.
That made me feel really good.’
In the November 1999 issue of Popteen, one of the major Japanese street
fashion magazines, a survey was conducted with 500 teens in Shibuya,
and they were asked who their role models for fashion were. No celebri-
ties ranked in the top five. The list included amateur high school models
who appeared in street fashion magazines and salesgirls in the 109
Department Store, who became famous in their own right. There is a
consensus among the teens that to find out what the current trend is, they
need to go to Shibuya. The 109 Department Store itself has become a
brand. On weekends, the store is packed with the teens dressed in a
Shibuya look.

Teen Consumers as Designers

Those who come to shop also play a crucial role in the production of
fashion trends. One of the salesgirls explained why becoming friends with
her teen customers is important: ‘I can get a lot of information through
chit-chat with these girls. I learn what kind of color combination they like
or they don’t like. They tell me if the skirt is too short or too long. The
pant legs are too wide or too narrow. If they say something is kawaii, that
usually sells.’ The teens’ opinions and voices are reflected directly in their
merchandise selection.
Many young designers who have started their own teen-targeted labels
used to be the followers of street fashion themselves. They represent the
young teenagers and attract cult-like followers. For instance, Takao
Yamashita, a designer for the label Beauty Beast, who was not trained in
fashion but is one of the most popular street designers, said: ‘Making
clothes is not enough. You need to imagine who will be wearing your
clothes and how they will be worn. We, designers, need to create a lifestyle
that comes with the label. We make clothes to communicate with our
consumers.’

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In the late 1990s many teens came to believe that anyone can be a
designer, without training, and many without any formal fashion degrees
became commercially successful. The definition of a designer as an occu-
pation has changed.

Artists-Turned-Designers in Harajuku and Ura-Harajuku

(Ura-Hara)
It was in the 1980s that Harajuku became famous because of street
performers and entertainers that appeared near the station on Sundays,
and Takeshita Street near the station became lined with fashionable stores
for teens. The most recent hot spot is Ura-Hara (short for Ura-Harajuku,
which literally means the back streets of Harajuku). There are small
boutiques and stores run by young artists, and this area is known as the
gateway to the mainstream Japanese fashion industry. The culture of Ura-
Hara is still very marginal and has an underground atmosphere, separate
from the mainstream scene. In this underground world, information about
new products is spread through word of mouth. Unlike the mainstream
fashion districts in Tokyo, such as Ginza or Omotesando, there were no
particular strategies to invest in and develop the small area of Harajuku.
The fashion business of Ura-Hara consists of so-called select shops2 that
sell minor brands designed by semi-professional designers, who may
have just graduated from fashion schools, and artists, such as graphic and
textile designers. There are also a number of collaborative projects
between brands, stores and artists.
According to marketing expert Kensuke Kojima (2002), some of the
unique characteristics of the fashion business in Ura-Hara are: (1) there
is no organizational structure to the business that they operate, such as
setting seasonal/annual budgets or promotional strategies; (2) they
consider manufacturing or the actual making process extremely import-
ant, and much time is invested in planning and merchandising, and these
items are sold in small quantities; and (3) they are not worried about the
mainstream trends and are content as long as their own unique styles are
accepted within their own community and are sensitive to the trends
within their own subculture. They are involved in creative aesthetic work
that demands innovation and adaptation to current fashion trends
(Aspers, this issue, pp. 745–63); making profit is not their ultimate goal.
Ura-Hara street fashion grew out of friends’ social network, and they
managed to commercialize products that they truly like and that they
think are cool and cute. Many of the creators and store owners are not
designers but, for example, former DJs, singers, stylists, editors and
bikers. Hiroshi Fujiwara, a former DJ, produces street-wear labels, and
the teens worship him. Fujiwara explains that a designer is not someone
who knows the technical terms of garment construction: ‘Ten years ago,

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nobody thought about making their own clothes . . . But you don’t need
a fashion background to make T-shirts. I would work with designers and
say: “I want a zipper here”, and they would say, “You can’t have a zipper
here”, and we would have big fights’ (Mead, 2002: 56). What they create
is not completely new, but they put additional elements to create some-
thing of their own. This is the basic philosophy found in Ura-Hara
fashion.

Gothic Lolitas on Bridge near Harajuku Station

Another trend or movement that has fueled Japanese street fashion is the
CosPlay movement, short for ‘Costume Play’, in which people dress as
characters from the Japanese manga comics, or the Japanese animated
films known as anime. The purpose of this trend is merely to have fun
and entertain oneself and others by dressing up as one’s favorite charac-
ter. Besides dressing up for public events such as anime conventions, they
walk around town wearing costumes. CosPlay of rock bands is also very
popular and whole events devoted to it take place before concerts, and
they hang around on the bridge near Harajuku Station with the Gothic
Lolitas, another subcultural group.
The Gothic Lolita is one of the most popular costumes found in the
Harajuku area since the later 1990s (Figure 2), and it is part of the Lolita
subculture. This style can be seen as a counter-reaction to the Ganguro
style and others that evolved out of it. It is a fashion style popular among
those who think Mamba, Yamamba or Ganguro is too outrageous. It is
usually worn by girls, and the image is that of a Victorian doll. Gothic
Lolita appears to be an exaggerated form of femininity, with pale skin,
neat hair, knee- or mid-thigh-length Victorian dresses, pinafores,
bloomers, stockings and shoes or boots.
Its substyles include Elegant Gothic Lolita with a monochromatic palette,
Classical or Country Gothic Lolita with pastel colors and Punk Gothic Lolita
with punk fashion elements such as leather, zippers and chains. Other
Lolitas include, Ama-Loli with a basic Lolita look using mostly white. If
pink is used, it is called Pink-Loli. When two girls wear exactly the same
Lolita style, it is called Futago-Loli, which means Twin Lolitas.
The Lolita followers have created a website community (Holson, 2005).
There are rules as to what kind of topics can be posted on the Internet so
that they can maintain their subcultural identity of the site. There are
discussions on Gothic Lolita brands, on Gothic Lolita handmade items, and
people ask for advice on how to put together a Gothic Lolita look. They
also share images from different Gothic Lolita brands, and auction, sell and
buy Gothic Lolita items. The enthusiasts create and use their own language
and abbreviations that outsiders cannot comprehend, such as LoliBra,
which means a Lolita brand, or a Cardi, which means a cardigan.

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Figure 2

An industry observer explained: ‘This is a style that has been develop-

ing out of the CosPlay movement in the streets of Japan for the last 10
years or so. The look has evolved and is slowly beginning to take root in
other countries around the world. Gothic Lolita is a combination of the
applied version of styles from the Victorian era and modern Gothic looks.’

A New Business Model: De-Professionalization of

Occupational Categories
Wearing the latest style was the privilege of the rich until the mid-19th
century in Europe, and it was they who initiated fashion. Applying Irving
Goffman’s (1959) idea of the social setting being divided into front and
back stages, it can be said that there was a clear distinction between the
front stage where fashion was exposed and the back stage where the
clothes were being manufactured for the rich. Once the clothes appeared
on the front stage, they were converted into ‘fashion’. Thus, the producers
of fashion and the producers of clothing were separate. There was a clear
division of labor, and the occupational categories were tightly controlled.
Even after fashion became an institutionalized system3 in Paris in 1868
(Kawamura, 2004a), the division of labor was fixed. Fashion was then
produced by designers and couturiers. The power relationship between
the designer and the consumer was reversed when the designer began to

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initiate the latest style. The professionalization of occupational categories

in fashion had been intact in the mainstream fashion world. However, in
the new model of fashion that is represented by the actors I study, such
categories are insignificant.
Japanese street fashion provides the industries with a new model of
fashion that blurs and defies occupational classifications in fashion. This
fashion is no longer produced by well-trained designers who know how
to drape, make patterns and instruct sewing procedures. Anyone with
great ideas is in the position to produce and disseminate fashion. This
new model allows the teens to be designers, merchandisers, salespeople,
stylists and models among many others. They are the gate-keepers, as
well as the agents, of street fashion.

Marketing and Diffusion Strategies

Kawaii as a Marketing Tool
According to Sharon Kinsella (1995), young women were the main gener-
ators of the cute culture in Japan. From the consumption of cute goods
and services and the wearing of cute clothes, to the faking of childish
behavior and innocent looks, young women were far more actively
involved in cute culture than men. Cute culture permeates Japanese teen
society, and it started as a youth culture among teenagers, especially
young women. It was not founded by business (Kinsella, 1995), but the
industries took advantage of and made good use of girls’ fondness for
cute products as a marketing strategy.
As I roam around the Shibuya 109 Department Store packed with teens,
on every floor, I hear them screaming ‘kawaii’ at the top of their lungs.
This term kawaii is often translated as ‘cute’ in English. However, this is
more than just an adjective. If retailers and manufacturers can material-
ize kawaii into fashion items, their brand will be successful. The street
fashion business in Japan boils down to this one word, kawaii. It is the
word they repeat like a mantra. One of the girls shopping with her friends
in Shibuya explained: ‘Kawaii is a state of mind and a lifestyle. My whole
life is about being kawaii. I’m always thinking about how I can make
myself even more kawaii.’4
Japan’s teen fashion industry revolves entirely around what the girls
in Tokyo say is kawaii, which also implies what is hot and cool and must
be at the basis of any fashionable products. What is kawaii or not can only
be determined by the teens themselves. A middle-aged guy who owns
and runs a clothing company or a store has no idea what is kawaii and
what will be commercially successful. What is defined as kawaii is a
mystery to many. One of the store owners said: ‘Even the teens probably
cannot define what kawaii is. It’s a feeling. When they see something that

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is kawaii, there is an immediate reaction. They intuitively know that it’s

kawaii. That’s why we need to have their input as a designer or as a sales-
person.’
Since fashionable clothing, especially in women’s wear and even more
so in street fashion, depends upon rapid changes in style, calculations as
to what to buy are fraught with risk (Entwistle, this issue, pp. 704–24).
Companies cannot afford to lose any profit in this extremely competitive
market. Thus, hiring teens as salesgirls, stylists, designers and marketers
is one of the surest ways to boost profits. For instance, they know the
exact shade of pink that the teens like, the exact length of a T-shirt that is
in fashion or how low they like to wear their jeans.
Teen-targeted labels also recruit designers from a pool of famous and
popular salesgirls working in the Shibuya 109. A former salesgirl said: ‘I
used to work there and once the magazine people took my picture, and
I appeared in the magazine, and then I was approached by a fashion
company to work as a designer for them.’ According to her, the company
sales increased by 180 percent after she was hired as a designer. Like the
former DJ, Fujiwara in Ura-Hara, most of them are not formally trained
in fashion design (Mead, 2002), but they know what kawaii is and, hence,
what will sell. Being young and knowing what is kawaii gives them an
edge over others. The salesgirl explained: ‘I sometimes go to thrift shops
in New York or Los Angeles and buy things that are kawaii as samples
and bring them back. I might change the color, size or minor details so
that they would meet the taste of the Japanese teens.’
Traditionally, company designers sketch, make presentation boards,
choose fabrics, make samples and instruct the production process. But
this procedure may no longer be effective. The companies need the teens’
ideas for their businesses to survive. A manager at the most popular shoe
store explained: ‘I listen to what my salesgirls and customers say and take
their advice seriously. I would change the designs or even the merchan-
dise display according to their taste. Whatever they say usually works.’

Scarcity, Originality and Speed

One of the girls in Ura-Hara said: ‘Sometimes my friends have something
really cute. I might ask them where they bought it, but I would never buy
the same thing. I want to look for cute things myself. I would never
imitate.’
In one of the most popular stores in the Harajuku district, major
Japanese designer labels such as Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des
Garçons have little popularity. The Japanese teens consider the inter-
nationally famous Japanese designers as too widely known. They get
pleasure out of discovering marginal underground designers and worship
their labels as their own. Scarcity and originality are what make the street

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labels appealing to them. These brands are not sold in the US or Europe
and they focus only on the domestic market. They want to wear clothes
that hardly anyone else wears, but at the same time that everyone will
recognize as exclusive. Thus, many street designers and stores often sell
only a limited number of garments.
However, Japanese street fashion is slowly spreading outside Japan and
is becoming a global business. Young Japanese street designers, such as
Jun Takahashi of Undercover, Keita Maruyama and Shinichiro Arakawa,
who represent the voices of street culture, and who have teen wor-
shippers, now participate in the biannual Paris fashion collections, since
that is where the annual cycle of fashion is anchored (Skov, 1996, 2005).
It is also the fashion shows of the different seasons that international
fashion magazines devote their pages to (Moeran, this issue, pp. 725–44).
One of Jun Takahashi’s followers said: ‘I liked him better when not many
people knew him. Now he’s too popular so I don’t want to wear his
clothes. Now I’m looking for a new exciting designer.’
Alex Wagner, a former managing editor of Tokion, a Tokyo-based
fashion and art magazine, says ‘Japanese culture is very ritualistic. They
get hung up on one thing and then it becomes this feverish race to get as
many of those things as possible’ (quoted in Ogunnaike, 2004). For some,
following a particular brand has a religious implication.
Speed is also another important characteristic of Japanese street
fashion, especially in the 109 store where merchandise changes very fast.
Unlike the mainstream fashion industry, they provide the teens with new
products every two to three weeks so that they find something new every
time they shop. This is why the clothes are set at a reasonable price. Each
item is roughly within the price range of US$30–50, inexpensive enough
for the girls to buy with their own pocket money that they earn by
working part-time jobs. ‘Newness’ has always been the essence of
fashion, and shopping is the major form of entertainment among the
teens.

Diffusion
Diffusion theories of fashion seek to explain how fashion is spread
through interpersonal communication and institutional networks, and it
can be assumed that fashion is not ambiguous or unpredictable. In the
aristocratic society of 17th- and 18th-century Europe, the fashion leaders
were members of royalty, while in democratic societies, politicians’ wives,
such Jackie Kennedy, or celebrities, like Madonna or Britney Spears, have
become the leaders of fashion.
As Crane (2000: 13) explains, most of today’s fashion is consumer
driven, and market trends originate in many types of social groups,
including adolescent urban subcultures, and consequently, fashion

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emanates from many sources and diffuses in various ways to different

publics. Fashion has become diverse and thus very much fragmented.
Moreover, the teens’ tastes are very fickle. No one can accurately predict
how long the trends will last. Tokyo girls are soon copied by those in the
countryside, and then they start looking for newer and a more kawaii look.
A store owner explained: ‘Some brands in 109 retain high sales even after
their popularity declines in Tokyo. This is because girls from outside
Tokyo come to Shibuya and buy up all the brands that have already lost
popularity among Tokyo girls.’
With technology and the Internet, it is not difficult to diffuse fashion
worldwide. The teens create websites promoting, chatting and exchang-
ing information about their favorite fashion. It is not surprising that some
of the Japanese street styles have migrated to the streets of New York City.
In addition to manga animation, sushi and other cultural objects, Japan is
now an exporter of the latest street fashion and is setting new fashion
tastes.

Teen Readers as Magazine Models

Any fashion, once it is created, has to be spread. The salesgirls can easily
spot the latest trends on the streets of Tokyo, but they cannot reach the
countryside or spread throughout Japan or overseas without fashion
magazines, which are the dissemination media. These magazines influence
not only the Japanese teens but also how the rest of girls in Asia dress.
Before the street fashion phenomenon that started in the mid-1990s,
the fashion trends were mostly dictated by the major fashion magazines,
but they no longer have complete dominance over the consumers. With
street fashion came a new type of fashion magazine. A number of
Japanese street fashion magazines, such as SOS, Tokyo Style News, Cawaii,
Fine and Egg, were almost simultaneously lauched in 1995. Instead of
having professional fashion models pose in famous designer brand
clothes, the street fashion magazines feature high school students and
teens on the streets.
The professional labor that used to require some formal training is being
replaced by untrained but fashionable amateurs. They are the ones who
create street fashion. As Crane (2000) pointed out, in postmodern cultures,
there is a shift from class fashion to consumer fashion. The consumers or
the readers are now playing the role of the producers and disseminators
of fashion and thus, the boundary between production and consumption
of fashion is breaking down.
The mass media contribute in collapsing the boundary between the social
organization of fashion professionals who are the insiders and non-
professionals who are the outsiders, by allowing the non-professional
viewers to take a look at and participate in the professional world of fashion.

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A teen described how she appeared in a magazine: ‘I visited the

editorial office at Egg. Then they called me later and asked me if I wanted
to model in the magazine. Then Cawaii called me. It’s a thrill to see your
picture in the magazines. I think everyone wants to be in it. That’s why
street fashion is getting more and more exaggerated so that they would
stand out and get their pictures taken.’
As indicated earlier, some teen models have become well-known
because of the frequency of their appearances in the magazines, and they
are hired by the popular retail stores as salesgirls. One of the store
managers in the 109 Department Store said: ‘We now aggressively hire
teenage models who appear in the street fashion magazines as our sales-
girls. It’s one way to attract the teens because they visit our store to talk
to them and get to know them.’

Conclusion
Sociological discussions of fashion look at the macro-structural analysis
of the social organization of fashion and also the micro-interactionist
analysis of the individuals, such as designers, publicists, journalists and
editors, involved in the production of fashion. This is different from the
production of clothing, dress or costume (Kawamura, 2004b). Sociologists
also investigate the interaction and interdependence between the organiz-
ation and the individuals in the world of fashion (Crane, 1997a, 1997b,
2000). Therefore, sociologists of fashion pay less attention to a semiotic
analysis of the details of clothing that costume historians might engage
in. Instead, sociology focuses on the social, cultural or subcultural context
in which a particular fashion phenomenon is produced, diffused, main-
tained and gradually fades away.
By using Japanese street subculture as a case study, we can understand
the group affiliation of the teens who walk around the streets of Tokyo.
Fashion in postmodern times emerges out of youth culture and is then
commercialized by the industry to reach a wider audience to spread it as
‘fashion’. There is a strong social connection and a sense of belonging
among those youngsters who dress themselves in unique and original
outfits, some of which may be outrageous, radical and extraordinary. As
Howard Becker (1982) remarked, art is a collective activity, and so is
fashion. Fashion is also a collective activity that arises out of particular
social relationships among the members of a subculture. Within every
subculture, there are common values, attitudes and norms that bind them
together, and they are frequently expressed visually through their distinc-
tive clothes, makeup, accessories and jewelry, which are used as their
symbolic identity. Fashion today cannot solely be dictated by professional
designers. The junior and high school students who represent Japanese

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street culture and fashion have the power to influence other teens. They
not only produce and diffuse fashion but also market and guide the
industry professionals about coming trends. This finding may also apply
to other creative industries. Particular styles imply which and what level
of social groups they are involved in. The teen consumers I have studied,
who are at the same time the producers, have a substantial impact on the
production and dissemination of fashion. This means that there is a
complementary relationship between the consumption and production of
fashion.

Notes
I would like to thank Patrik Aspers, Joanne Entwistle, Brian Moeran, Lise Skov,
Árni Sverrisson and all other participants at the ‘Encounters in the Global Fashion
Business’ conference, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for their comments, suggestions
and ideas.

1. The term Kogal is often associated with the term Enjo-Kosai, which translates
literally as ‘assisted dating’. Teen girls meet with older men for sex in exchange
for expensive designer label gifts or money to finance their shopping spree.
2. Select shops are small boutiques where shop owners’ tastes in selecting, mixing
and remixing merchandise are highly valued by customers.
3. In the modern system of fashion, there are networks of institutions, companies,
journalists, designers and many other fashion professionals. See Kawamura
(2004b).
4. According to a random selection survey of 110 people, of which 89 answers
were returned, conducted by Kinsella in 1992, 71 percent of the young people
between 18 and 30 years of age either liked or loved kawaii-looking people,
and almost 56 percent either liked or loved kawaii attitudes and behavior
(Kinsella, 1995).

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Biographical Note: Yuniya Kawamura is assistant professor of sociology at the

Fashion Institute of Technology/State University of New York. She is the author
of The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion (Berg, 2004) and Fashion-ology: An Intro-
duction to Fashion Studies (Berg, 2004).
Address: Social Sciences Dept-RoomB634, Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 West
27th St, New York, NY 10001, USA. [email: [email protected]]

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