Fashion Seminar Bibliography

 

Natalie Alvarenga

Integrative Seminar 2: Fashion

Annotated Bibliography

3/12/18

 

Research Question:

I am studying the way Japanese subcultures have been appropriated because I want to find out why or how the subculture in japan has declined in order to help my reader understand how taking appropriating a style and making it mainstream affect the smaller subculture negatively.

 

Keywords:

Culture appropriation, Japan, Harajuku, Subculture, Style, Mainstream.

 

Cills, Hazel. “Looking Back at Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani’s Racist Pop Frankenstein, Ten Years Later.” Vice. November 29, 2014. Accessed March 26, 2018. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnqmam/revisiting-gwen-stefanis-racist-pop-frankenstein-ten-years-later-567. This Article on Vice also examines Gwen Stefani’s appropriation of Japanese Harajuku style and discusses the problematic aspects of using this to benefit her career and exploit a culture foreign from hers to make her look original. Vice writes that “Love. Angel. Music. Baby. is simultaneously a racist mess, a lyrical car crash, and a treasure chest containing champagne kisses”.

 

Dockterman, Eliana. “Gwen Stefani Owes Us An Apology for the Racist Harajuku Girls.” Time. October 20, 2014. Accessed March 26, 2018. http://time.com/3524847/gwen-stefani-racist-harajuku-girls/. This Time Magazine article online discusses how Gwen Stefani culturaly appropriated the subculture style in Japan’s Harajuku in the 90’s and refuses to apologize for it. It brings up the issue of stereotyping girls in Japan and how this portrayal of them affects the perception of Americans on Japanese culture. I plan to use this to bring up the important issue of appropriating a subculture in a place like Japan and how it affects not only the perception of Japanese women, but how it affects the Harajuku subculture’s existence. They quote Maragaret Cho’s comment on Stefani’s appropriation, she says, “Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day, we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time, we weren’t there”.

 

“Does Gwen Stefani’s ‘Harajuku’ Cartoon Really Have Zero Japanese Characters In It?”. KQED. September 15, 2016. Accessed March 26, 2018. https://www.kqed.org/pop/36785/does-gwen-stefanis-harajuku-cartoon-really-have-zero-japanese-characters-in-it.This article discusses the extent in which Gwen Stefani took culture appropriation of Harajuku Culture in Japan. She continues on to create a Harajuku kids TV show in which she released a show on nickelodeon called Kuu Kuu Harajuku, where she is the main Character and the other four are her Harajuku girls. None of the characters are Japanese, they are just dressing the part. This shows her continuation of Harajuku into pop culture and kids TV shows by using Harajuku for her own advantage.

 

Godoy, Tiffany, and Ivan Varianian. Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion, Tokyo. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2007. Style Deficit Disorder written by Tiffany Godoy, a Vogue contributor, and Ivan Varianian, includes information about a variety of subcultures in Japan. The book includes information on how Harajuku started and a collection of subcultures that came from that location. There is also information discussing style and rebellion and some relevant magazines like FRUiTS that documented the style in Harajuku. There are photos of some influences on the street style as well.

 

Grobe, Max. “Tokyo Street Style Is Always Next Level: Check Out The Fits.” Highsnobiety. March 24, 2018. Accessed March 26, 2018. https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/tokyo-street-style-fw18/#slide-2. This article online called Tokyo Street Style is Always Next Level on Highsnobiety depicts street style that is seen in Japan today. I plan to use these to compare and contrast the older styles and new styles seen in the streets of Japan today and why they have changed so much from Harajuku style subcultures.

 

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Subculture: Routledge, 2011.

Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style goes over the various subcultures that existed in New York and how they came to be. The introduction in the book talks about the meaning of subculture and how it is “always in dispute, and style is the area in which the opposing definitions clash with most dramatic force” describing the desire to stand out and rebel against the mainstream is what the subcultures stem from. I want to use this to inform my essay on the topic of subcultures and how they come to be from the underground to mainstream culture.

 

Healy, Claire Marie. “The Photographer Who Lensed Japan’s Harajuku Trailblazers.” Dazed. January 12, 2016. Accessed March 16, 2018. http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/29001/1/fruits-future-pop-fashion. This article by Dazed Magazine written by Claire Marie Healy includes a talk with legendary street style photographer Shoichi Aoki and how he captured subcultures through street style in japan. Shoichi describes the teenage girls from Harajuku as “neither pretty nor sexy, but they told the world what they were without the world telling them”.

 

Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashioning Japanese Subcultures. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.This academic source called Fashioning Japanese Subcultures was written by Yuniya Kawamura, an associate Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology, published by Bloomsbury Academic. It includes information on subcultures in Harajuku and more. One of the chapters I intend to use is called “Harajuku: Youth in Silent Rebellion”, it talks about how these different identities would emerge and girls would reach a feeling of self-liberation through doing this. There are also interesting discussions about “the trickle up theory”, where the describe the various Harajuku styles were born on the streets.

 

 

What Harajuku Girls Really Look Like | Style Out There | Refinery29. November 12, 2015. Accessed March 22, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WblNctc3ys0&t=187s. This video called What Harajuku Girls Really Look Like by Refinery29 shows the Decora style and culture of Harajuku. This video shows the lives of two Japanese fashion stars and how they identify with the subculture of Decora in Harajuku and what their lifestyles are like in this subculture. I plan to discuss how these unique styles of the past contrast with the styles today.

 

Young, James O., and Conrad G. Brunk. The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, a John Wiley & Sons,, Publication, 2012. The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation will inform my essay on the topic of cultural appropriation. I want to discuss the appropriation of various subcultures within a community like Harajuku and talk about how that causes its demise of their subcultures in a certain area of Japan. The book states that “The fact that misrepresentation has occurred and continues to occur in the treatment of minority cultures in fiction and film is undeniable. It is easy to identify works of art in which cultures have been harmfully or offensively misrepresented by outsiders”. This can connect to the way in which pop culture in the U.S. takes from Japanese subcultural styles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natalie Alvarenga from Miami, FL. Rising Sophomore in Design and Technology at Parsons.

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