Bloomsbury Japanese Fashion Cultures: Dress and Gender in Contemporary Japan (Dress, Body, Culture)

From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common perceptions of gender in Japanese dress and the notion that non-western fashions simply imitate western styles. Through case studies focussing on fashion image consumption in style tribes such as Kamikaze Girls, Lolita, Edwardian, Ivy Style, Victorian, Romantic and Kawaii, this ground-breaking book investigates the complexities of dress and gender and demonstrates the flexible nature of contemporary fashion and style exchange in a global context. Japanese Fashion Cultures will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies, gender studies, media studies and related fields. Review "Fashion trends are inherently transitory and intrinsically fragmented. Yet Monden sees sufficient continuities and commonalities within the world of contemporary Japanese fashion to warrant a search for significant social and cultural insights. In his four case studies, he examines fashion magazines aimed specifically at young men, the reasons behind the style choices of two female 'idol' singers, the seeming discontinuities between outward appearance and hardheaded individuality present in the heroine of a well-received film, and the long-term success of 'Ivy Style' among both men and women in the world of modern Japanese fashion ... his work upends conventional expectations by intuiting, for example, that fashion-conscious young Japanese men might well be rejecting the blue suit, white shirt and tie style typical of the conventional Japanese 'salaryman' rather than exhibiting a kind of feminized masculinity ... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." --L. A. Makela, emeritus, Cleveland State University, CHOICE"Here is fascinating insight into the 'boyish charm' of Japanese menswear labels such as Milkboy. ... Suddenly, as an American, I am given new insight into the semiological logic of a style which one might have assumed to be uniquely American-- the logic of 'dressing down' without actually dressing down; indeed, 'dressing down' to demonstrate 'old money' status. ... I for one have learned a lot." -Ted Polhemus, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture From the Back Cover From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common perceptions of gender in Japanese dress and the notion that non-western fashions simply imitate western styles.Through case studies focussing on fashion image consumption in style tribes such as Kamikaze Girls, Lolita, Edwardian, Ivy Style, Victorian, Romantic and Kawaii, this ground-breaking book investigates the complexities of dress and gender and demonstrates the flexible nature of contemporary fashion and style exchange in a global context. About the Author Masafumi Monden is Research Associate at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.