Japanese Gothic Dresses (& other related frillies) Gallery - Page 1

Elegant Japanese Gothic, or Japanese Goth for short, is a Japanese teen or young adult who dresses in amazingly elaborate frilly sissy-like Gothic looking babydoll costumes & dresses. On the weekends these women walk the streets of Tokyo and Osaka and fill Yoyogi Park and Harajuku neighborhood where they pose for tourist’s pictures and sit around looking pretty. They are beautiful, glamorous, doll-like manifestations of their favorite Visual Rock stars with an overwgelming amount of ruffles & lace.

A related & similar fashion style, Kinderwhore is a little more popular than Japanese Goth in the west.

For many years, an argument between Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland over who had come up with the idea raged, with Bjelland claiming that Love had stolen the style from her. Before earning their own success, Love and Bjelland had played together in a band called Sugar Baby Doll, and so it is difficult to prove either way who came up with the idea of Kinderwhore. Love claimed that she took the style from Christina Amphlett of 1980s Australian rock group, Divinyls, in an interview in the Los Angeles fanzine Ben Is Dead. [2]

The look typically consisted of torn and/or dirty Babydoll dresses, plastic girl's hair clips, ripped stockings and leather boots. In addition, it was common to wear overdone, often smeared makeup with the look. The intention was for it to be a sexually provocative, D.I.Y. subversion of the traditional prom queen look, and the supposed feminine, fragility of the image works in stark contrast to Bjelland's extremely aggressive singing style. It caught the attention of the rock music press (particularly in the UK) who were the first to label it Kinderwhore or Baby Doll depending on the publication.[3]

Following the notoriety garnered by Babes In Toyland, a new found interest in all female (or at least female fronted) bands began. Any American band with at least three female members were categorized under the term Riot Grrrl. Though Kinderwhore and riot grrl are forever linked, by no means did all of the Riot Grrrls dress in the Kinderwhore fashion. Rather, Kinderwhore was part of the reason for Riot Grrrl's early success. In discussing Riot Grrrl's early British success, the context of the early 1990s British music scene must be remembered. Any sense of style at the time was largely non-existent; shoegazing bands who stared at the floor whilst playing and had no exciting image were all the rage, and so the exciting Kinderwhore look would have stood out on front covers.