Stylistic Analysis of Lolita Fashion

Japanese contemporary culture, including fashion, has increasingly gained popularity outside Japan, making it a timely topic for both scholarly and wider publics. Most current studies of popular culture focuses on manga, anime, and other such forms of visual culture, and dress and design studies are also emerging as a rapidly growing field. Building on the works of McVeigh (2000), Miller (2006), Slade (2010) and Steele (2010), this book addresses this new interest in an innovative fashion, expanding the significance of dress and delving into a wide range of examples from films, magazines, music videos and literature. By connecting diverse topic areas including dress, gender, media and cultural studies, Japanese Fashion Cultures analyzes the relationship of fashion aesthetics and gender identity within an increasingly interconnected, transnational world.
The book pays particular attention to the relationship of past and present. It examines contemporary Japanese fashion trends that adopt and restyle European historical clothing forms: the Edwardian dandy style, Victorian little girls’ dresses, and the Rococo and Romantic dress typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Japanese fashion culture actively promoted European clothing styles both politically and aesthetically, particularly since the country’s re-engagement with Euro-America in 1868. Throughout this book, I refer to the theory of “format” and “product” articulated by cultural sociologist Keiko Okamura (2003) where a cultural form, in this case Euro-American clothing styles, can be seen as a “format” when accepted globally. This standardized “format” becomes a carrier of the locality of cultures, allowing its “local” characteristics to be visible, measurable, and comparable with that of other cultures. Through this theoretical idea, I explain complex cultural theory using compelling examples. For instance, differences in preferred modes of masculinity and fashionability in Japan and Euro-America will be explained via garments and advertisement campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana. This process will therefore reveal the characteristics both universal and culturally specific to the Japanese context, including the ways in which Japanese men and women engage with fashion today. This poses a challenge to a widely held, often Eurocentric notion that Japanese men and women simply desire to imitate their Euro-American counterparts.

Japanese Fashion Cultures provides comprehensive insights into representations of clothes and gender in a society still poorly understood by outsiders. I dispel the popular misconception that Japan approves of gender inequalities and that women still occupy inferior social positions to men, expressed also in clothing. I argue that using the lens of fashion reveals the complexities of gender relations in Japan. Four contemporary case studies position the argument: young men’s fashion magazines, female performers’ use of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in music video, “Lolita” fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls, 2004), and the continuing remarking of “Ivy-League” style in Japan. These four examples are notable for their adoption of historic European and American clothing forms. Their relatively “mainstream” stature in contemporary Japanese culture comes with a “twist” or unconventional characteristics. The “mainstream” standing of these types of popular culture indicates their reach, consumed by a great number of individuals within Japan. Certain qualities they manifest, on the other hand, impose a subtle, almost “delicate” kind of revolt against a set of idées fixes surrounding the relationship between clothes and gender. Using media and cultural texts as a primary source for discussion enables consideration of these complex links between distortion and reality. As Diana Crane (1990) has argued, both are parts of the “real” world where these case studies are first produced.

The first important issue this book raises is that, through negotiating male readers’ desire to attract admirers and to dress for their own pleasure, young men’s fashion magazines endorse the idea that crafting a pleasant look is the foundation of self-assurance and a successful life. Secondly, I show that female Japanese singers allow an accentuation of femininity without necessarily sexualization through the use of Japanese cute (kawaii) aesthetics. The third possibility this book explores is that highly decorative styles of Japanese Lolita fashion should not be read as symbolic of restriction and passivity. The fourth point this book addresses is that, as illustrated by the Japanese embrace of the “Ivy style,” both men and women engage with fashion in very similar ways. This is a major point of difference with the role of fashion historically in Euro-America.

These readings offer novel ways to understand the relationship between gender and dress, which is often blamed for maintaining repressive distinctions between “man” and “woman” in contemporary culture. Ultimately, this book aims to show that the Japanese appropriation of European clothing forms shows that there might be different, and hence less rigid approaches to understanding the relationship between fashion and gender. Japanese refashioning of European clothing concepts, this book argues, offers a compelling case for the implication of the aesthetics of fashion, gender, and cross-culturalism.

“Masafumi Monden's book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring colourful examples from Japan's vibrant street culture and fashion, he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social relations in Japan.” –  Brian J. McVeigh, University of Arizona, USA,

“Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today's Japan.” –  Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan,

“Masafumi Monden's fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is especially significant, as it calls into question persistent stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with fashion.” –  Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City, USA

“From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.” –  Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA

"Masafumi Monden’s Japanese Fashion Cultures shines a spotlight on many of the looks that brought the world’s attention to an island nation which, like Britain, has consistently punched above its weight in matters of dress and appearance...In Japanese Fashion Cultures you have some most interesting comments about gender and I for one have learned a lot about the less reported (in the West at least) looks for young Japanese males." - Ted Polheums, Author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk

Derived from Vladimir Nabokov’s eponymous 1955 novel and its pre-adolescent heroine, seen by the older male narrator as a ‘nymphet’, the ‘Lolita’ look typical in the United States, for example—generally characterized by highly eroticized adolescent or preadolescent girls—has stirred controversy in many Western societies. Japanese Lolita fashion, on the other hand, is characterized by images of women adorned in elaborate dresses with delicate fabrics inspired by stylistic interpretations of early-modern European clothing such as Rococo and Victorian dresses. The style thus exudes the look of European bisque dolls, yet one senses there is something odd about these Japanese ‘European’ dresses.

Lolita style also references various forms of contemporary popular culture, including Western Goth subculture, manga, anime and Visual-kei (Visual-Rock) music—a Japanese music genre popular in the 1990s, typified by musicians wearing elaborate make-up and hairstyles, with flamboyant, rather androgynous costumes. Although it is practised by a small group of people, Lolita fashion has received substantial media and academic attention, perhaps due to its visually spectacular and eye-catching nature. Moreover, the presence of Lolita fashion has increasingly been noted in locations worldwide. But why do people wish to dress in Lolita fashion?

When discussing cultural flows within a transnational context, often the focus of debate is the issue of whether cultures tend towards unification or. In this chapter however, I am interested in whether flows of culture override or dissolve cultural differences in the places they reach, via an examination of Lolita fashion. The first section focuses on Lolita fashion in the Japanese context. Paying particular attention to its stylistic aspects, I examine one of the ways in which historical European clothing has been appropriated in Japan. The second section looks at the Lolita trend outside Japan by way of a textual analysis of an Anglophone on-line community for Lolita fashion lovers, ‘EGL (Elegant Gothic Lolita) The Gothic & Lolita Fashion Community’. In so doing, I will explore how concepts such as ‘local’ and ‘global’ have been relativized or renegotiated in Lolita fashion.

Elegant Gothic Lolita, or simply Lolita, is a fashion subculture that began as a street fashion among the youth in Harajuku Japan. Lolita fashion is characterized by the modest and Victorian era inspired clothing that often features knee length skirts and dresses that are supported by petticoats, blouses with ruffles and pintucks, and legs covered by either stockings or socks. The Lolita fashion subculture has spread to outside of Japan and communities are now found in almost every US State. The purpose of this project is to explore the rituals, practices, and conflicts, in Lolita Communities of the United States, especially in the realms of behavior, dress, and sexuality. As with many cultures, there are a set of punishments and rewards for following or failing to follow the protocols that are set in place. I explore what these rules, behavioral protocols, rites of passage, and dress codes are, while also examining the punishment and reward systems that are in place. Participant observation, interviews, and auto-ethnography have been used. The Lolita fashion subculture is complex and hierarchical. An emphasis is not just placed on the clothing involved in the subculture, but also on the personalities and merits of each individual member and how they interact with the community as a whole.

'Lolita is back.’ As early as 1996, Hannah J. L. Feldman made this statement in regard to a newly emerging phenomenon, represented at the time in art and popular culture, by a ‘triumphant emblem of a newly configured’ feminist model for the young woman, who, unlike Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 heroine, ‘no longer represents a young girl’s vulnerability to an older man’s lascivious desires’ (52). ‘To be Lolita’, she declared, now ‘means to take control… and to reverse the pejorative connotations of [male dominance] and aggressive sexual behavior’ (Feldman 1996: 52). Under this particular banner of ‘Lolita’ has grown a fashion-based youth movement known as Gothic & Lolita, a youth street subculture that originated in Japan and is rapidly gaining worldwide appeal.
The most prominent face of the Gothic & Lolita subculture is the Lolita herself (gothloli, gosurori), the young woman whose style, based on little girls’ fashions of the Rococo, Romantic and Victorian periods, is signified by her doll-like or childish appearance. As the Lolita also commonly collects and plays with dolls, and sometimes parades with them on the street, this preoccupation is, therefore, often seen as superficial and meaningless, and disregarded as merely another development of a perceived Japanese obsession with all things ‘cute’ (kawaii), which has been represented in terms of an ‘infantile mentality’ (Kageyama 2006). However, this dismissive attitude overlooks more complex psychological and sociological issues behind the motivation towards participation in the Japanese Lolita movement. It also fails to recognise the subculture as a ‘transgressive model for representing female sexuality’ (Feldman 1996: 52).
As it is essentially a ‘feminine’ movement, the Lolita subculture is unique. What sets this phenomenon apart from the subcultural ‘model’ is that the face of the Lolita is paradigmatically female. Whilst, according to Dick Hebdige’s observation ‘girls have [in the past] been relegated to a position of secondary interest within both sociological and photographic studies of urban youth, and [that] masculine bias [has existed]… in the subcultures themselves’, the Japanese Lolita movement, as noted by Yuniya Kawamura (2007), is essentially a girls’ subculture (344), which may be understood in terms of a tribal empowerment against the so-called ‘Lolita Complex’, a term applied by sociologists in Japan to a ‘male desire for girlish women’ (Feldman 1996: 55).
How, though, does one battle against a paradigm of male dominance, female vulnerability and victimisation, from a position that appears to adopt the very construct that is being challenged? The Lolita, after all, in her embracement of frills and childish frippery, may lead one to suggest that her behavior is, in fact, frivolous and morally irresponsible. Herein lays the paradox. What is shocking about the Lolita subculture is exactly this: although many members (Japanese or otherwise) choose to deny any sexual connotations in regard to either their appearance or infantile habits, the Lolita’s adoption of a seemingly submissive, yet sexually provocative identity (even in the acceptance of the Lolita tag) is controversial and contentious, and therefore rebellious. Furthermore, the new Lolita reclaims her right to be feminine. She hijacks the male fantasy, turns it on its head, takes possession of and power over it, and escapes with it to her own realm, one that is instead controlled by a force of ‘girlish’ women. 
This chapter discusses the impetus for this Lolita phenomenon in Japan and its increasing relevance and importance for young women worldwide.
References:
Feldman, H. J. L. (1996), The Lolita Complex, World Art (Australia) 2, pp. 52 – 57
Kageyama, Y. (2006), Cute is King for the Youth of Japan but It's Only Skin Deep, The New Zealand Herald, Friday 16 June, p. B3
Kawamura, Y. (2007), Japanese Street Fashion: The Urge to be Seen and to be Heard, in Welters, L., and Lillethun, A. (eds), The Fashion Reader, Oxford and New York: Berg.

From its inception, the subcultural movement known as Gothic and Lolita has displayed an exchange of ideas between Japan and Euro-American cultures. More recently, however, the subculture has shifted, not only in regard to traditional meanings, and the way that it operates, but also geographically, into communities on the periphery of its original sites of major interest. In the past few years, Latin-American nations, particularly Mexico, have become conspicuous “hotspots” for participation in the movement. This transition raises questions about differing socio-politics and cultural understandings, particularly regarding gender.
As a girls’ subculture, Gothic and Lolita broke with historical, stereotypical frameworks that positioned subcultural movements from a male-dominated perspective. In Japan, it also demonstrated a resistance to established roles for, and expectations of, women. As such, it has been argued that the original Japanese Gothic and Lolita movement represented a new type of feminism. Over time, as the subculture transmigrated into other sites, especially the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and North-Western Europe, this context became less pertinent. However, the relatively recent growth of Gothic and Lolita communities in Mexico exhibits a new phase of the movement, which shakes up past meanings and understandings, yet again, especially in terms of gender politics.
How is gender understood within the Gothic and Lolita movement in a Mexican environment? What does this context mean to, and for, Mexican participants? How is the movement observed by friends, family, and outsiders? Why is this movement becoming prevalent in Mexico? How does it operate? Why does it resonate with participants? How is it relevant? And how is it transformed from its Japanese origins? As both an “insider” and “outsider” researcher of the Gothic and Lolita subcultural movement, this paper reveals some of the outcomes to these questions via a critical analysis of ethnographic studies undertaken with members of the movement in Mexico.

This thesis, completed for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Material Culture, Ph.D., examines the development of the fashion-based Mexican Gothic and Lolita movement, and its evolution from its subcultural Japanese roots. It asks, “What are the cultural conditions that encourage this movement to flourish in the Mexican environment?” In turn, “What does Mexican culture contribute to Mexican Gothic and Lolita style?” And, “What does Mexican Gothic and Lolita style say about Mexican culture, society, and beliefs?”
The Gothic and Lolita movement is currently thriving in Mexico as an authentic, independent, creative, handmade fashion industry, yet to be co-opted into mainstream culture. With the do-it-yourself aspect of the movement comes its own, unique, cultural flavour. As such, it transforms and rearranges meanings of the original subcultural style in order to make new statements, which subvert the meanings, and understandings, of the Japanese Lolita identity. Analyses of Mexican Gothic and Lolita styles, in context with the Mexican environment, culture, and belief systems, as well as the operation of the do-it-yourself Mexican Gothic and Lolita industry, are major focal points of this study. Also investigated are the ways the movement reflects, fits into, and departs from, the philosophies of the original subculture, especially regarding sociocultural and gender politics. These latter aspects are critiqued in context with “normative” gender positions, roles and hierarchies, within mainstream Japanese and Mexican societies.

Note: This text is the final draft approved for publication. Link to the published version: https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fashion-photography-archive/article/lolita DOI: 10.5040/9781474260428-FPA158.

"Launching in 2016, the Fashion Photography Archive is a fully searchable and meticulously indexed resource, containing over 600,000 high quality runway, backstage, and street style images that have never before been published online. The images are complemented by hundreds of articles, audio and video resources that provide context and analysis from expert scholars and commentators.

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This paper discusses how museums and galleries might positively engage with Asian audiences and bring Asian communities into the museum environment. Museums are cultural institutions that should reflect, preserve, interpret and promote cultural heritage and communities. In the local Acts of the four major metropolitan museums in New Zealand, there are specific requirements for these institutions to represent their communities’ ethnic diversities. New Zealand has become increasingly multicultural. According to New Zealand’s 2006 census, 17.8 percent of New Zealanders are of non-Pakeha, non-Maori ethnicity, and 22.9 percent were born outside New Zealand. With the growing number of Asians living in New Zealand, and in particular Auckland, a question may be raised as to whether local museums truly reflect and engage with these communities. Using the example of the exhibition Loli-Pop: A downtown Auckland view on Japanese street fashion as a case study (Auckland War Memorial Museum, 14 September – 26 November 2007), the authors explore how New Zealand museums and galleries can effectively reflect and communicate with Asian audiences through exhibition.

This exhibition, a collaboration between AUT University and Auckland Museum, explores street style in Japan, from the perspective of a New Zealand response to the Japanese phenomenon generally known as the Gothic & Lolita movement. The Gothic Lolita, or Loli-Goth, style is designated by fashions inspired by the Rococo, Romantic and Victorian periods. It is based on a particular notion of the Gothic, represented by historical mourning garb, maidservants’ wear, children’s dresses, and dolls’ clothes. The Loli-Goth thus demonstrates a predilection for bloomers, petticoats, pinafores, ribbons, ruffles, bonnets, lace headdresses, parasols, and Mary Jane shoes. The appearance, therefore, often evokes that of a Victorian doll.

Loli-Pop brings together the relationships between the Loli-Goth and popular culture, and the strong association of the Loli-Goth with the Doll, with a selection from curator Kathryn Hardy Bernal’s personal collection of Japanese Lolita dolls. This display is supported by the highlight of the show, five full-sized garments, designed and constructed by AUT University Fashion staff members, Angie Finn, Yvonne Stewart, Lize Niemczyk, Gabriella Trussardi, Kathryn Hardy Bernal and Carmel Donnelly, which demonstrate the designers’ own interpretations of Gothic & Lolita (specifically, Gothic Lolita, Sweet Lolita, Punk Lolita, Gothic Aristocrat and Country Lolita, respectively), inspired by Japanese street style. The exhibit is complimented by a backdrop of photographs that illustrate the impact of the outfits when worn, modelled by AUT University Bachelor of Fashion Design students, Emily Huang, Shangshang Cookie Wang, Emily Wang, Shiahug-Wen Sean Kuo and Yanling Wang. A visual framework is incorporated by two further photographic series, comprising shots taken on the street by Auckland Museum’s Bevan Chuang during a recent research trip to Tokyo with Kathryn Hardy Bernal, documenting current incarnations of Gothic & Lolita in Japan, which is supported by images of local Loli-Goths, contributing to the New Zealand context of the Exhibition.

The fashion style of the ‘Gothloli’ (Gosurori, Gosu-loli, or Gothic Lolita), a member of the contemporary ‘Lolita’ subculture, is inexorably bound to the archetypal ‘Alice’. Members of this movement dress in garments inspired by the Victorian age, whilst the silhouette is reminiscent, particularly, of Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s heroine, and defined by Walt Disney’s, Alice. Most often, the design is referential and, other times, the translation is more literal, whereby outfits may be decorated with Alice figures and motifs.
The Alice-Lolita image is prolific, especially in Japan. Here, the relationship between Alice and Lolita also appears in other areas of popular culture, such as shōjo graphic novels and anime, and in the art of Nori Tomizaki. In Tomizaki’s digital paintings and manipulated photographs of doll-like figures, or lifelike dolls, there is an emphasis on the Gothic, whereby Alice and the Gothloli are juxtaposed to represent the epitome of a sweet-but-scary little girl.
However, there may be more than a superficial connection between Alice and Lolita, in that, it may be argued, there is perhaps no coincidence that the author, Lewis Carroll, or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (his true identity), is believed to have suffered from a syndrome known as the ‘Lolita Complex’, the condition that takes its name from the female protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious novel, and is designated as an obsession with young girls. Though – whilst Carroll’s Alice stories, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Gothloli are similar, in the fact that they all serve to immortalise the Little Girl – the Lolita fashion style, formed in Alice’s image and bearing the title of the Nabokovian child, is determined to be neither directly, nor circumstantially, related to its namesake.
This chapter explores these intertextual relationships between Alice, Lolita and the Lolita fashion-based movement, and investigates the validity of the subculture’s identification with the Lolita Complex.

This paper investigates the social dimension of kawaii fashion communities in Tokyo, informed by Goffman’s theory of the definition of the situation and Huizinga’s concept of the rules of play. Kawaii fashion communities is a term used to refer to a group of individuals who wear, consume and create clothing that is described as adorable, and includes styles such as Lolita fashion, Decora fashion, Fairy kei and Hime style. The paper argues that social interactions in kawaii fashion communities are governed by the delivery and reception of an aspirational kawaii performance. While kawaii fashion-making is initially an individual process informed by affect, participants shape and alter their presentation of self in order to be affirmed by other practitioners. This affirmation validates the participants desire to be like the kawaii things that they admire. As a result, this community negotiates a series of complex social systems which establishes style genres, modes of behaviour and rules of dress that allow practitioners to be recognisable to each other. In this way the social interactions between members interweaves both affectual and aesthetic experiences of kawaii, as well as concepts of individuality and conformity.