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Literally on the bleeding edge of fashion, Japanese clothiers have devised yet another teenybop trend designed, I can only imagine, to baffle Americans. It’s called Kegadoru, which roughly translates to “injured dolls” (also known as “one-eyed virginal maid mummies”) and involves young women wearing frilly, Lolita-style dresses and accesorizing with bandages, slings and eye patches. According to one young devotee of Kegadoru interviewed by Japan’s Weekly Playboy,
“When you’re covered in bandages, everybody pays attention to you and worries about you. They also provide a chance to start talking to guys, who’ll ask you how you hurt yourself, so the bandages are really, really good. One guy told me he likes seeing a thin woman’s body wrapped in bandages because it made him think about bondage, and made him want to protect me from harm.”
Gadling’s Matthew Firestone lives in Japan and offers this explanation for weirded-out Westerners:
In a country where individual thought and expression is frequently squashed by a society that values conformity and order, dressing up in bizarre fashions is one of the few outlets that rebellious teens have. In the teen-fashion district of Harajuku in Tokyo, cosupre (costume play) has even become a weekly scheduled event, taking place every Sunday in front of the bridge leading to Meiji Shrine. For most of these teens, who grow up in sterile, concrete housing blocks that are typical of much of urban living in Japan, the Sunday street show is sadly their one chance to break away from a repressive culture.
Via Gadling.
Comments (6)
Comment
I’d just like to point out that “cosupre” is just ingrish for cosplay- it’s just an assimilated word.
posted by Adam on 10-3-2007 at 10:13 am
That second image looks like a Reita cosplayer. >.> His noseband isn’t part of that bandage costume culture.
posted by xenylamine on 10-3-2007 at 11:41 am
I’ve seen a lot of cosplay stuff like this, but the bandage thing is new to me. You see a lot in animes that some of the most interesting characters have bandages or eyepatches (see: Naruto).
posted by heather on 10-3-2007 at 1:54 pm
I think that this is sick.
I hope that none of these girls ever has to experience a medical problem that requires them to be bandaged up like this.
posted by Janix on 10-4-2007 at 10:35 am
hehe reita is a major fashion i con, along with gackt and mana-sama of course, but the fashion isn’t just depicted from visual kei or the j-pop scene its freeing to wear all those things, i wear bandages and eyepatches too, along with the face masks and its just really fun, btw the more color the better or in general the more dramatic it is the better
posted by grace on 2-1-2008 at 10:34 am
It’s not as sick as injuring oneself for attention; it’s quite popular in our western hemisphere. And even though we do have freedom of expression, we choose not to use it. So today i will dress like Britney, and if that boy at school dosen’t acknowledge my presence, i’m going to…im sure you can finish that. there are many stories. can i have an eye patch please?
posted by Ella on 4-8-2008 at 9:47 am