Decorated Youth: The Street Fashion Revolution in Japan and the Reordering of Form, Aesthetic, and Identity through Dress

Emerging street fashion trends in 1990s Japan changed fashion and clothing systems not only domestically, but around the world. These rebellious urban youth, and their eccentric styles, have landed Tokyo on the map as a legitimate city of fashion production; challenging the long established European hegemony of sartorial power. Of these styles ‘decora’ (which literally means to be decorated) stood out with its bright colors, extreme ornamentation, and command of all things cute. This thesis seeks to explore the iconic ‘decora’ style as a representation of how street fashion in Japan is used as a tool to reorder aesthetics, identity, fashions systems, and the meanings associated with dress. The research of Amelia Groom, Yuniya Kawamura, and Toby Slade are used widely in this study, and the ‘decora’ style is placed into their theories to better understand fashion and clothing systems, identity, innovation and imitation in a post-modern Japanese context.