What is Kawaii? Harajuku Girls?
Kawaii is a Japanese word meaning ‘cute’ and is a huge cultural phenomenon in Japan where jewellery, clothes, animation, card design all reflect a super cute style. Kawaii often shows smiley animated critters like teddy bears and kittens, foods like jelly and pizza and even happy rainclouds. Kawaii is cute and innocent. Girls that love the style often possess a super girly character and high feminine voices. The drawing style of Kawaii has simple clean lines and has spawned many well known brands including Hello Kitty, Momiji dolls (which are hugely popular and collectable in the UK) and even the loveable Tamagotchi pets.
Kawaii Animals
The influence of kawaii is in so many mainsteam European and American products from lunchboxes to pencil cases to wrapping paper. Personally, here at Rapunzel’s Retreat, we’re a fan of the anime and manga stylings surrounding this trend. You may have heard of the Harajuku girls as well – either from the Gwen Stefani song entitiled Harajuku girls or from their amazing styling. Harajuku is a area in Tokyo near the Harajuku station which is a popular weekend hangout for fashionable girls who wear kawaii and lolita style clothing. Harajuku fashions have many subcultures including gothic lolita (victorian style lacy blouses and full skirts in black!) to classic lolita (victorian style full skirts and parasols in whites and creams) and even cyber punk styles and neon trends. Here’s a picture of some more modern Harajuku girls which are rocking the cute, girly, frilly pink modern lolita which can be seen in the Japanese Station’s area and crosses between lolita fashion and cool Kawaii style.
Harajuku Girls - Kawaii and Lolita Style
Kawaii influence has even spread to non-Japanese artists such as the UK based contemporary artist Fiona Hewitt whose love of cute and kitsch animals is shown clearly in her artwork. We currently stock a Fiona Hewitt Kawaii style Classic Hardware bracelet showing anime style animals in cute pastel shades which is currently priced £74.95 and is available for a limited time only in our ASOS marketplace store. Also if we were able to style a Harajuku girl that loved the gothic lolita style, we’d add our Classic Hardware gothic fairytale girls bracelet to the mix, priced currently at £64.95 on our website. Here’s an image of the gothic fairytale lolita style clothes from Harajuku.
Harajuku girl with a gothic lolita fashion sense
Classic Hardware Gothic fairytale Girls Bracelet
Kawaii Style Forever Sweet Animal Bracelet
