Word: himes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...didn't care because I just wear what I like." Sanae Nagamine, a 21-year-old waitress from Hitachi in northeastern Ibaraki prefecture, had to take a two-hour train ride to join her friends on this pilgrimage to Jesus Diamante, one of the first fashion brands to promote hime-kei, as the look is known, with its frilly pastel frocks and ringlet hairdos. With money earned from part-time work, the girls plan to shop for two hours at the brand's Harajuku store before heading to its Shinjuku branch. "I love their design. It amps me up!" enthuses...
...Hime-kei appears to have been inspired by American filmmaker Sofia Coppola's movie Marie Antoinette, with its lush rendering of the decadence of the court of Louis XVI. The rush of young Japanese women to emulate the look of 18th-century French aristocrats has grown from a fad into something of a movement, whose leader is the popular singer Ayumi Hamasaki. It even has its own magazine, Koakuma Ageha, with a circulation of 350,000. If Coppola's movie created the wave, Osaka-based Jesus Diamante was ready to ride it. Established in 2001, the label had offered luxurious...
...Takatoshi Imada of Tokyo's Institute of Technology, Value and Decision Science sees hime-kei as a response to an unsatisfying way of life. "The hime-kei girls removed the borders between the virtual and real worlds," says Imada, who believes the phenomenon is rooted in a rejection of the goals of advancement through hard work in an ailing market economy. "They longed for a different form of self-expression and sought a more meaningful way of life." Searching for meaning through the fashions of a doomed European aristocracy may be a form of protest against a business-driven contemporary...
...Japan's depressed economy, "princes" who can offer their brides an aristocratic lifestyle are an endangered species. But like the entourage of Marie Antoinette, the hime-kei girls keep on spending as if they live in their very own bubble economy...