Who wouldn’t want to be a Harajuku girl? You don’t walk away unaffected by this kaleidoscopic mix tape post-mortem chronicle of a pop culture phenomenon that swept the world off its feet.



Title: Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion Tokyo
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Author: Tiffany Godoy
Editor: Ivan Vartanian

The fact that Chronicle Books published Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion Tokyo for New York Fashion Week 2008 in February should have been a hint to the universal influence the little street of Harajuku wields.

Once upon a time, it was a place for the Japanese to look at foreign culture and style. Today, the view is reversed— through the looking-glass, the international fashion institution is the awestruck Alice in Wonderland in search of its muse in Harajuku’s cross-pollinated street culture, which is just a mere square-mile of a neighborhood but has made Tokyo’s mark on the world’s fashion map as a cutting-edge style mecca, driving the world’s most trailblazing designers with inspirational sparks of brilliance. It is the portal to a bold new world.

“You walk into Harajuku and — bam! — you’re in outer space.”

How did little Harajuku conquer the world to become the definitive in international fashion?

At the helm of this epic adventure, Tiffany Godoy steers the curious deep into the consciousness of the split personality of a little neighborhood in Tokyo. She has drawn up a pretty comprehensive map to chart Harajuku’s phenomenal rise into superstardom.

If geishas were the epitome of art and beauty, could Harajuku girls be the new geishas?

Well, yes… and no. There’s more to it then a stereotypical American-generated spin. Godoy presses her finger on its erratic pulse to profile Harajuku’s many founders in typefaces, which demands that only the determined demystify Harajuku’s language.

Harajuku’s story began with Yacco Takahashi, the first professional stylist to work in Japan. He worked with designer Kansai Yamamoto, whose impressive wardrobe David Bowie borrowed as Ziggy Stardust and propelled Japanese design into space-age future.

Masayoshi Sukita, hailed as the grandfather of Japanese music photography, brought David Bowie and Iggy Pop to Harajuku Studio for their photo shoot. The images were later featured on the covers of Bowie’s Heroes and Pop’s Party albums.

Calling itself a “fashion concept” band, The Plastics continued to shape music and culture even after each member moved on to other projects, just as hair and make-up extraordinaire Katsuya Kamo knew no bounds in his creations.

Comme des Garcons, while not a Harajuku brand, has been the beacon of light to Harajuku designers.

Hitomi Okawa is said to the muse of Harajuku, and one worthy of the title with her contributions. Her shop Milk was a sartorial exchange where Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones hung out and John Lennon and David Bowie were regular customers, and she herself was a connection between fashion’s poles of disparity, creating revolutionary combinations and thrashing old mindsets.

While fashion stylist Sonya Park commandeered the kawaii movement, Hysteric Glamour took trashy Americana and B-movie chic and articulated a new, Japaneseness.

Before the Sartorialist Scott Schuman, Shoichi Aoki bore silent witness to Harajuku’s diverse fashion movements such as cyberpunk, mod-punk, hip-hop and Goth-Lolli, through his lens.





Nigo built an international empire out of BAPE. He’s a great fan of DJ-art director Hiroshi Fujiwara, always the coolest kid around, the renowned trendsetter who introduced hip hop to Japan. Both of them earned their celebrity status thanks to their high-profile partnerships with some of the world’s biggest names. “Fendi collaborates with Nigo, Prada parties with Hiroshi Fujiwara as DJ”.



Which begs the questions: Did these protagonists make a success out of Harajuku, or did Harajuku created stars out of them?

What, exactly, is Harajuku? Is it a place, the nerve center at the heart of fashion?

Is it a symbol, brought to life by the characters who want to do (or be) something now?

Is it a language, an idea, a concept, a philosophy, articulated and circulated through street fashion publications?

Or is it a moment, borne out of a vicious acceleration as Harajuku races towards the next Big Thing?

This certainly explains the book’s title. As Godoy noted: “Trends appear in a flash and disappear just as quickly. Kids move in and out of styles with amazing agility. One-time stars of the scenes are wash-up has-beens weeks later. Anyone who stays put is left behind: fashion plat leftovers. More roadkill on fashion’s street runway. Harajuku is a headless beast that is at the mercy its desires and restlessness.”



As exemplified by the creative practitioners featured in the book.

Despite all the glorious technicolor dreams it wove, the lack of substantial content on its website drips of disappointments (like the promised commentaries by Suzy Menkes and Patricia Field in the book) and Godoy’s last chapter paints a somewhat bleak picture of its future.

Still, she ends her story on a hopeful note, in a spirit reminiscent of the Harajuku’s happy chaos that lives a strange, albeit super stylish, nihilist.

Where the landscape has become a canvas, where all the good Galliano girls go, where its denizens are crowned fashion celebrities on the street runways, where sharp snapshooters and fashion hunters prowl to capture its zeitgeist, where the subtlest difference makes the most dramatic statements, where there is no rewind or pause, only fast-forward, where the only constant is to catch the groove.

“You Harajuku girls,
Damn, you've got some wicked style” – Gwen Stefani, “What You Waiting For?”.


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