Why gyaru died and lolita lives
I've mentioned before on this blog that I have a very wide interest in fashion, and I especially like gyaru. I follow a couple blogs and I'm in the big online community, and on both a reoccurring subject is the death of gyaru and how to bring it back. It got me to wonder why gyaru (and many styles with it) died while lolita remains as popular as ever, if not bigger than it's ever been! From what I could find, there are several reasons why lolita is still massive while other styles are slowly dying.
Like I said, gyaru isn't the only style that faded from the limelight in the past years. styles like decora and fairy kei also died. A large chunk of why this happened is simply because Japan is aging- decora and fairy kei and gyaru are mainly styles worn by teenagers and early twentysomethings over there. They've grown up and moved on- wearing alt fashion as a grown up unfortunately is looked down upon. Sure there are new teenagers but they tend to flock to cheap stores. Why pay 100+ dollar for some cool Liz Lisa/D.I.A/whatever jeans when you can go to H&M and get jeans for 30? Teens are poor, and todays teens are poorer than 10 or 20 years ago. But why doesn't that really affect lolita? Because lolita has always attracted people who didn't give a damn. Old GLB's are filled with people straight up lying about their age, you can see the same girls appear in street snaps for years and years and all that time they claim to be eighteen. Growing up isn't necessarily a reason to quit lolita for them, it just means having more money to shop with! Jane Marple, who are not mainstream by any definition of the word even mainly target late 20's-early 30's aged women. It's also easier to dress lolita and not be as flashy. You can wear sandals and a sundress with a small petticoat and still wear lolita. If you try to strip down gyaru (or decora etc) to a casual look, it'll end up looking just...normie. People tend to ditch their old flashy clothes because there isn't really a way to wear them more toned down and more adult-looking. It's easier to just switch to a different style that's more accepted by society. That's especially true for gyaru which is literally all about looking flashy and standing out, which is not usually something a Japanese adult strives for. And if something is or isn't trendy in Japan, the overseas communities tend to follow that.
Another reason I found is that all Japanese fashion is toning down and getting less sexy. Seriously, I don't know how many girls in brown ankle-length dresses I saw on my trip to Japan! All fashion is becoming simpler, longer, easier to wear, less flashy. That's not a problem at all for lolita, again, you can have a very simple low-poof dress that is still 100% lolita. Brands have started to use light and floaty fabrics instead of neon prints to make an impact, silhouettes have loosened and wigs have become more natural, but the style of today is still undeniably the same fashion as in 2012 or even 2002. All its main components are still there. However for gyaru, this is a massive problem. You can't make a gyaru brand toned down or not sexy and still have it be the same brand, it'll lack literally everything that made the brand unique. Gyaru are all about staying on trend, but when a gyaru goes for natural hair and toned down makeup and longer skirts, is she still wearing gyaru? Brands also water down their flashiness in order to stay on trend, but when your brand used to be ALL about being flashy, you're just diluting the thing that made you unique. Many of them in fact moved away from what was their trademark style in order to appeal to the masses- and that's not good for the subculture behind it.
I think this really shows nicely what I mean with "watered down". Both of these are MA*RS, left 2011 and right 2019. Now you don't need to *like* 2011 MA*RS, but you can't deny that it's a completely unique style that's very recognizable. It's bold and it's THERE. That 2019 coord though? Is it Swankiss? Fint? Cinnamon Honey? Axes Femme, DreamV, Liz Lisa, Ank Rouge? I don't know, it's boring and generic. Yawn.
Something that Mitsu from UniversalDoll also noted is that people are coming down from the 2012 high of alt fashion and they're looking to go back to basic. No problem whatsoever for lolita. We're having a massive resurgence of oldschool right now, with plain dresses, cutsews and a lack of wigs. We have oldschool meetups and there's a big oldschool community on facebook. So why can't gyaru just do that? Well, because oldschool gyaru looks like this:
Literally the opposite from back to basic. Gyaru didn't start as a simple style that grew more elaborate, it started as extremely flashy and moved on to being flashy in a different way. There IS no 'back to basic' for them because there never WAS a 'basic'. Instead people are just ditching their short skirts and makeup and big hair- basically that what makes gyaru gyaru.
To really top it all off, lolita has an incredibly strong international community as opposed to gyaru. This started wayyy back in 2002 where the then very gothy and punky look of lolita clicked right onto the western alt scene. The complete lack of local lolita sources made for a very tightly knit community where people made their own brands and put a lot of effort into meeting other lolitas and building friendships. If you look way back on EGL you find reports of meetups with sometimes just two or three people who all traveled hours just to meet one another. Large communities came to be, which not just anybody could join. We got lots of exposure, be it positive or negative, which lead to new girls finding the style and joining in, big brands came overseas and started shops and hosted big events, then lolita became trending in China and it completely exploded. The 2019 lolita can choose her outfit from dozens if not hundreds of brands that are all unique, then meet up with her local community and if she's lucky she can go to a big event hosted by AP itself. Gyaru doesn't really have any of that. Sure, gyaru came to the west during the same time and a gyaru livejournal was made around the same time...and that was it. No big communities or events. Personally I think this is A. because people simply didn't need to be in close contact with one another to "do" gyaru, all you needed was some new makeup and some hair dye -no need for special meetups or events either, you look perfectly in place in a club- and B. because people in the west have a certain admiration or at least a lack of stereotyping for girls in pink petticoated dresses, but a dislike for girls in short skirts with lots of makeup. Lolitas have been stereotyped as emos, living dolls, fetishists, princesses or weaboos, things that are both good and bad, but gyaru to most people simply looks like trailer trash, especially years ago before instagram and insta-makeup looks became popular. That means way less girls think "ooh I want to wear that too!" compared to lolita. Even today the gyaru community is weaker than the lolita community. Lolita has Lolibrary, a whole 4chan forum, numerous facebook communities and discord/reddit servers and several big events each year. Gyaru has one big facebook group and one big meetup each year, and that's kind of it. There are no big local communities, just "gyarusa" or circles which are closer to groups of friends than a full community. For comparison, the big international gyaru meetup in 2015 attracted about 70-80 people and the Angelic Pretty tea party of that year about the same- when the gyaru meetup was 100% free and the tea party cost upwards of 70 euros to attend and had extremely limited ticketing. In my opinion, that says a lot about the number of people in and the strength of the community.
Honestly there is so much more to this subject, like the decline of gyaru magazines or the change in hostesses' off-work fashion etc, but I think these are the main reasons why lolita is booming and why gyaru is just about scraping by. Which I think is really unfortunate! I adore gyaru as a style and I think it deserves more recognition. It's fun and it's extremely broad, even moreso than lolita, so why not take a look and see if it's maybe a style you could enjoy too? The international gyaru community is doing all it can to keep the style afloat a little longer, people do their best to post a lot, there was a big parapara project a short while back too. I myself would be very sad if a style this cool and varied disappeared after decades of being so big, just because of a perfect storm of negative happenings.
And just in case you're unconvinced this is something you might like, I grabbed a bunch of shop staff pictures from Universaldoll to show gyaru isn't just short skirts, tans and neons. Flashy can mean "stylish" too!
In case you want to read more, my favourite gyaru bloggers are HelloLizzyBee and Universaldoll.
Like I said, gyaru isn't the only style that faded from the limelight in the past years. styles like decora and fairy kei also died. A large chunk of why this happened is simply because Japan is aging- decora and fairy kei and gyaru are mainly styles worn by teenagers and early twentysomethings over there. They've grown up and moved on- wearing alt fashion as a grown up unfortunately is looked down upon. Sure there are new teenagers but they tend to flock to cheap stores. Why pay 100+ dollar for some cool Liz Lisa/D.I.A/whatever jeans when you can go to H&M and get jeans for 30? Teens are poor, and todays teens are poorer than 10 or 20 years ago. But why doesn't that really affect lolita? Because lolita has always attracted people who didn't give a damn. Old GLB's are filled with people straight up lying about their age, you can see the same girls appear in street snaps for years and years and all that time they claim to be eighteen. Growing up isn't necessarily a reason to quit lolita for them, it just means having more money to shop with! Jane Marple, who are not mainstream by any definition of the word even mainly target late 20's-early 30's aged women. It's also easier to dress lolita and not be as flashy. You can wear sandals and a sundress with a small petticoat and still wear lolita. If you try to strip down gyaru (or decora etc) to a casual look, it'll end up looking just...normie. People tend to ditch their old flashy clothes because there isn't really a way to wear them more toned down and more adult-looking. It's easier to just switch to a different style that's more accepted by society. That's especially true for gyaru which is literally all about looking flashy and standing out, which is not usually something a Japanese adult strives for. And if something is or isn't trendy in Japan, the overseas communities tend to follow that.
Another reason I found is that all Japanese fashion is toning down and getting less sexy. Seriously, I don't know how many girls in brown ankle-length dresses I saw on my trip to Japan! All fashion is becoming simpler, longer, easier to wear, less flashy. That's not a problem at all for lolita, again, you can have a very simple low-poof dress that is still 100% lolita. Brands have started to use light and floaty fabrics instead of neon prints to make an impact, silhouettes have loosened and wigs have become more natural, but the style of today is still undeniably the same fashion as in 2012 or even 2002. All its main components are still there. However for gyaru, this is a massive problem. You can't make a gyaru brand toned down or not sexy and still have it be the same brand, it'll lack literally everything that made the brand unique. Gyaru are all about staying on trend, but when a gyaru goes for natural hair and toned down makeup and longer skirts, is she still wearing gyaru? Brands also water down their flashiness in order to stay on trend, but when your brand used to be ALL about being flashy, you're just diluting the thing that made you unique. Many of them in fact moved away from what was their trademark style in order to appeal to the masses- and that's not good for the subculture behind it.
I think this really shows nicely what I mean with "watered down". Both of these are MA*RS, left 2011 and right 2019. Now you don't need to *like* 2011 MA*RS, but you can't deny that it's a completely unique style that's very recognizable. It's bold and it's THERE. That 2019 coord though? Is it Swankiss? Fint? Cinnamon Honey? Axes Femme, DreamV, Liz Lisa, Ank Rouge? I don't know, it's boring and generic. Yawn.
Something that Mitsu from UniversalDoll also noted is that people are coming down from the 2012 high of alt fashion and they're looking to go back to basic. No problem whatsoever for lolita. We're having a massive resurgence of oldschool right now, with plain dresses, cutsews and a lack of wigs. We have oldschool meetups and there's a big oldschool community on facebook. So why can't gyaru just do that? Well, because oldschool gyaru looks like this:
Literally the opposite from back to basic. Gyaru didn't start as a simple style that grew more elaborate, it started as extremely flashy and moved on to being flashy in a different way. There IS no 'back to basic' for them because there never WAS a 'basic'. Instead people are just ditching their short skirts and makeup and big hair- basically that what makes gyaru gyaru.
To really top it all off, lolita has an incredibly strong international community as opposed to gyaru. This started wayyy back in 2002 where the then very gothy and punky look of lolita clicked right onto the western alt scene. The complete lack of local lolita sources made for a very tightly knit community where people made their own brands and put a lot of effort into meeting other lolitas and building friendships. If you look way back on EGL you find reports of meetups with sometimes just two or three people who all traveled hours just to meet one another. Large communities came to be, which not just anybody could join. We got lots of exposure, be it positive or negative, which lead to new girls finding the style and joining in, big brands came overseas and started shops and hosted big events, then lolita became trending in China and it completely exploded. The 2019 lolita can choose her outfit from dozens if not hundreds of brands that are all unique, then meet up with her local community and if she's lucky she can go to a big event hosted by AP itself. Gyaru doesn't really have any of that. Sure, gyaru came to the west during the same time and a gyaru livejournal was made around the same time...and that was it. No big communities or events. Personally I think this is A. because people simply didn't need to be in close contact with one another to "do" gyaru, all you needed was some new makeup and some hair dye -no need for special meetups or events either, you look perfectly in place in a club- and B. because people in the west have a certain admiration or at least a lack of stereotyping for girls in pink petticoated dresses, but a dislike for girls in short skirts with lots of makeup. Lolitas have been stereotyped as emos, living dolls, fetishists, princesses or weaboos, things that are both good and bad, but gyaru to most people simply looks like trailer trash, especially years ago before instagram and insta-makeup looks became popular. That means way less girls think "ooh I want to wear that too!" compared to lolita. Even today the gyaru community is weaker than the lolita community. Lolita has Lolibrary, a whole 4chan forum, numerous facebook communities and discord/reddit servers and several big events each year. Gyaru has one big facebook group and one big meetup each year, and that's kind of it. There are no big local communities, just "gyarusa" or circles which are closer to groups of friends than a full community. For comparison, the big international gyaru meetup in 2015 attracted about 70-80 people and the Angelic Pretty tea party of that year about the same- when the gyaru meetup was 100% free and the tea party cost upwards of 70 euros to attend and had extremely limited ticketing. In my opinion, that says a lot about the number of people in and the strength of the community.
Honestly there is so much more to this subject, like the decline of gyaru magazines or the change in hostesses' off-work fashion etc, but I think these are the main reasons why lolita is booming and why gyaru is just about scraping by. Which I think is really unfortunate! I adore gyaru as a style and I think it deserves more recognition. It's fun and it's extremely broad, even moreso than lolita, so why not take a look and see if it's maybe a style you could enjoy too? The international gyaru community is doing all it can to keep the style afloat a little longer, people do their best to post a lot, there was a big parapara project a short while back too. I myself would be very sad if a style this cool and varied disappeared after decades of being so big, just because of a perfect storm of negative happenings.
And just in case you're unconvinced this is something you might like, I grabbed a bunch of shop staff pictures from Universaldoll to show gyaru isn't just short skirts, tans and neons. Flashy can mean "stylish" too!
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| Laguna Moon, Cocolulu, Duras, Egoist |
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In case you want to read more, my favourite gyaru bloggers are HelloLizzyBee and Universaldoll.
I remember reading an article quite a while back now that also mentioned the 'death of Shibuya' as one of the causes of the decline of gyaru. While both Shibuya and Harajuku are now just flocked with generic fast fashion chain stores, lolitas still have some lolita-specific shops and outlets in Harajuku (Closet Child, LaForet's B1.5 floor, Q-Pot Cafe), whereas all the gyaru shops in Shibuya were either replaced with mainstream fast fashion or, like you said, they changed their style/image so much that it is unrecognisable from mainstream Japanese fashion right now.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, looking at some of these snaps that you put here, I feel like some women who wore gyaru may have moved to its subtler cousins, e.g. like what Larme magazine showcases, and while they still wear and like the gyaru look, they may simply not label their own style as such? Like you said, it's acceptable for a Japanese teen to be into alternative fashion and having a label that connects you to other likeminded people creates a sense of identity. However, as an adult in Japan you prioritise blending in a bit more and are very likely keeping your private life and interests private - so tagging your outfit shots on social media as just 'kawaii fashion' or simply by brands instead of '#gyaru' allows them to blend in with the mainstream and avoid weird looks from friends and co-workers, when in fact you're still wearing what you like. Particularly this blue x white Liz Lisa outfit, as well as the two Duras looks you shared, probably wouldn't look out of place inside Larme or tulle magazines' outfit snap pages, because they fit that mould, while still being gyaru.
Lastly, while you're definitely right about the fact that gyaru can't do a 'back to basics' thing because it started off so loud and flashy, I think it's also a product of the times. Remember what the fashion and makeup trends were like in the 2000s-2010s? Blonde with dark highlights, dark lip liner with tonnes of clear lip gloss, plenty of silver or holo - those looks may be slightly embarassing right now, but they were trendy and mainstream back in the 2000s. True, gyaru never was mainstream in Japan, but I think it probably has taken a lot of inspiration from those flashy Western trends, as well as from the domestic one (like decoden-ing everything, which both gyaru and decora fans did). It's natural for styles to change and evolve, that's how lolita remained valid and, by comparing the 2011 MA*RS picture with the ones at the bottom of your post, so has gyaru, even if its popularity is much weaker than that of lolita. The desire to stand out isn't as strong these days in Japan (and given the current popularity of comfortable clothes and sportswear in the West, probably here too). Some women still incorporate gyaru elements into their style (e.g. tan, which is generally hugely unpopular in Japan), whilst keeping the rest of the outfit a bit less flashy. And in that sense, gyaru both dies (because it is no longer 'shouting from the rooftops' kind of flashy) and lives on (because people still wear it and incorporate bits popularised by it).
I hope my ramblings made sense :P
You're definitely right on the death of Shibuya! I can't believe I forgot to touch on it in this post! >< The overlap with western 2000's trends is an interesting take I hadn't considered, I always tend to assume fashion comes from Japan to the west but it goes the other way too of course! I do want to say that the shop staff snaps I posted are in fact quite old, they were uploaded during the heyday of gyaru (all are from 2011-2015) so they aren't examples of a toned down gyaru look at all! It would be clearer if I also posted the corresponding nail and make-up snaps as every single girl had at least flashy gels and some girls had full acrylic claws. What you said is still 100% true of course, lots of girls have moved onto larme and such, lots of brands have gone full larme too (like Liz Lisa). In that sense it's actually pretty funny these old and quintessentially gyaru snaps already fit a mold that wouldn't come to be for another 5+ years!
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