A Harajuku Cinderella Story
This week's Video Column pick had me at the abstract flatulence. Kyary (aka きゃり or Carrie) started as a Japanese fashion blogger, became a Harajuku fashion mag model, launched a line of fake eyelashes and now (since last month) she's a Jpop phenom. What's not to love?
This week’s Video Column pick had me at the abstract flatulence. Kyary (aka きゃり or Carrie) started as a high school fashion blogger, became a Harajuku fashion mag model, launched a line of fake eyelashes and now (since last month) she’s a Jpop phenom.
‘Her Harajuku Cinderalla story is inspiring but her video is downright amazing for its visual gymnastics that achieves everything an artist Ryan Trecartin can do visually but without the jittery jump cuts.
The song itself is catchy and I think Patrick Macias’s take on the tune seems right:
“PONPONPON” is exquisitely pitched right on on the razor’s edge between catchy and annoying; where real pop music resides.
Sure, Westerners will see shades of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Assume Vivid Astro Focus and other artists who love the juxtaposition of extreme patterns, maybe even aspects of Western subcultures, think Leigh Bowery, and pop culture, Katy Perry’s “California Girls” video. But Kyary’s video isn’t flattening the visual universe into a kawaii milkshake (which is what I think Takashi Murakami does so well) but it is more focused on celebrating the pop culture juggernaut that is Harajuku street fashion and the industries, not to mention subcultures, it has spawned. Harajuku collides styles from across history and the globe but all with a certain aesthetic that gives it a jarring unity.
You can find her website here, her unofficial English-language Facebook page and we can’t wait to see her autobiography (if it’s every translated into English), which features a photo of her with a nose bleed. What’s not to love? Though the overset figure in pink dresses and brown patterned fabric over his or her face may give me nightmares.
h/t Onnik K.
