Whether it be Marylyn Manson’s baroque stadium tours, a noir-revival in film or artists who explore death, deformation of the body or self-identity, these attempts break through the norm of the status quo. And so, the youth, pop-culture as well as contemporary art have been infected with notions of Goth. The Goth culture of today, found in movies, music, fashion and literature, is influenced more by the revival movement and hinges on darker, yet familiar, concepts of death, darkness or night, abnormality, insanity and just about anything that is opposed to a healthy and conservatively-perceived status quo.
While the noir-drenched subculture’s origins are rooted in the aesthetics of the “gothic” art movement which permeated Europe from the 12th to 16th centuries, Goth imagery and iconography and fashion we see today is more connected to the 19th century British revival movement which entertained a longing for medieval times. Unmistakably, Goth-culture has emerged from centuries ago back into the fore of 21st century life. Courtesy of the Artist and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City Lakra, Untitled (Muscidae and Tea), 2007. The responses are sometimes surprising, sometimes shocking, often hilarious, and always compelling.Tokyo correspondent Vicente Gutierrez paid a visit to the Yokohama Museum of Art last month to check the exhibition Goth – Reality of the Departed World. Presented in a simple format with a funky design, hundreds of teenagers posed for the camera in their imaginative and often surreal outfits and offered personal insights into the idea behind their personal fashion choices. Specially commissioned by Phaidon Press and based on the creative design of the bestselling Fruits and Fresh Fruits, Gothic And Lolita features portraits and group shots of Japanese Goths and Lolitas both at home and in the urban centers of Tokyo and Osaka. Influenced by Western fashion trends from the mid-1980s, young teenagers, predominately adolescent girls, began to dress in juxtapositions: corsets, spikes, lacy Victorian dresses, dark eye makeup, black spandex, frilly tutus, patterned knee-highs, ruffled bows, and wigs of all lengths and styles.
The origin of this eccentric fashion movement traces back to Osaka in the mid-1990s when young teenagers adopted Gothic fashion in response to the clothes worn and promoted by Japanese Gothic rock bands. A mixture of high fashion and home-made ensembles, the Gothic and Lolita scene is a bizarre hybrid, boasting thousands of devotees who dedicate their lives to creating ever more flamboyant and original variations of this fused style.
Gothic and Lolita, edited by Katsuhiko Ishikawa with photographs by Masayuki Yoshinaga, is a new photographic collection that celebrates the eclectic and bizarre street fashion of Japanese popular youth culture.
0 kommentar(er)
