Word: shibuya
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Moussy, a boutique located on the fifth floor of the 109 Building in Tokyo's Shibuya district, is dim, cramped and messy. The austere space communicates antifashion; there is nothing cool about the spartanic sloppiness. So why are hordes of ultra-trendy young girls lining up behind a velvet rope, eager to enter a shop whose untidy stacks of faded T shirts and cubbyholes stuffed with dark denim jeans remind one of little more than a misplaced garage sale? Here's a clue: amid the jumble of voices filling the shop as the girls paw excitedly through the clothes...
...What those Tokyo girls define as kawaii can be as cute as frilly pink shirts one day and as raunchy as a vinyl miniskirt the next. A year ago, the most popular items in Shibuya were Esperanza's light brown knee-high platform boots and black face paint?the so-called "gal" look. Now it's remade clothes, faded jeans and low-heeled pumps. Why the change? "I dressed gal style because it was popular. But everyone just got sick of it and besides, this new look is much more kawaii," says salesgirl Chie Sakakibara, 22. Hiroaki Morita, head...
...that breeze through in weeks, months or, like, whenever. And when it comes to knowing exactly which shade of beige Tokyo's trendsetters want to wear and how low-slung they want their jeans, those teen-targeted labels recruit heavily from among the karisuma tenin (charismatic salesgirls) of the Shibuya 109 building. "They started hiring us because we wore different, interesting clothes and the magazines were using our pictures. For a while, everyone knew who I was," explains 23-year-old Mana Takai, now designer for Jassie, another trendsetting label. Almost in unison, every label that wanted to stay afloat...
...most profitable labels foster tight working relationships with Japan's myriad, ubiquitious teen fashion magazines. Karisuma tenin can spawn trends inside Shibuya, but they can't reach the countryside or abroad without a fashion mag's endorsement. Japan's high-school girls read, on average, at least five fashion magazines a month, which means the influence of the right Tokyo glossies can be huge. "If a magazine advertises a certain brand or look, girls will buy it," Takai says. The most popular ones tend to showcase karisuma tenin in their brand's clothes, launching waves of copy-cat teenagers...
...those pins to their lapels. That creates a hothouse environment where a brand can go from unknown to saturation point in under a month. "Some brands in 109 retain high sales even while their popularity is already declining," says Morita. "This is because girls from outside Tokyo come to Shibuya and buy up all the brands that have already lost popularity among Tokyo girls...