Infodump

Lolita is an alternative style in Japan mainly popular in the ‘90s and ‘00s based on French Rococo and English Victorian styles but made contemporary.
Olive was started as a women’s fashion magazine as a sister to Popeye which was a men’s fashion magazine which spawned off of An An which was a women’s life style magazine. Adding onto that Popeye has a running website where it hosts it’s now digital magazine. But back onto Olive, it was mainly aimed towards university-aged women and was inspired (like Popeye) by American fashion and later on was inspired by French highschool girls. The names were also inspired by the Popeye comics. In 1985, Olive, while still holding onto a cute sensibility, also started growing up alongside it’s readers creating a guide for career women before the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in May of the same year. Although, it saw a decline in the ‘90s as Gyaru (Girl) fashion started becoming popular in the ‘90s and ‘00s.

Starting in 1997 as Olive decline FRUiTS was first published by Shoichi Aoki who also created Street Magazine in 1986. Fruits mainly focused on individual styles outside of the mainstream of the fashion-industry. Including many alternative styles like punk, goth, ganguro (a substyle of gyaru where there is excessive tanning), and what we’re focusing on, lolita!
Aoki’s work has a similar baring on documental photography. Aoki always has a small blurb about the person, mainly about what they’re wearing, what inspired them in their fashion journey, and what their current interest. As news broke out that Fruits was ending Aoki said “fashionable children were no longer able to take pictures… I felt like I wouldn’t be able to take as many shots as I needed to be published.”

Here we are, this is practically a holy grail in the EGL community. G&LB was published in 2001 (getting an English release in 2008) and was formed as a companion to Kera from the 1990s. The main focus of the magazine was Malice Mizer band member Mana who popularized the Gothic Lolita substyle. Although, it seemingly was riding the coat-tails of the end of the style’s popularity as it fully ended publishing in 2017 with 63 volumes in Japanese (and 5 in English ending in 2009).

As Lolita/EGL fashion began dying out especially in Japan in the late 2010s, a new style began in the early 2020s based upon how mentally ill women in Japan are called landmines or jiaris. It is mainly used against women with Cluster B disorders like BPD, NPD, HPD, especially calling them dangerous, crazy, and associating them with the yandere archetype in anime & manga. Jirai started out as a trend as COVID-19 was on it’s way as a pandemic. It was also joined in by Toyoko Kids who are usually victims of grooming, sexual assault and trafficking. In the English-speaking side of the subculture, many want to separate the mental health aspect of it. Meanwhile, some also in the English-speaking side of it still include the mental health aspect, but are pro-recovery. I think it is also important to note that this style usually also attracts people on SH/ED twt that can typically be racist, fatphobic, and anti-recovery.

So practically, in the 80s and 90s Japan had a heavy influence from American fashion as a response to the occupation in the 40s and 50s with the photography being fairly staged.
In the 90s and 00s the fashion became more of it’s own with gyaru, v-kei, and egl fashion with a more casual openness, with product shots between the spreads.
And more recently we’ve seen a combination of the staged shot and product shots on the same page. Also seeing a more digital side of the photography as the internet has consumerized.

Am I not supposed to feel satisfied?
It feels like even when everyone says
to feel proud of myself
I am not able to

I think I’ve somewhat fake looking
competent enough to pass
And sometimes I feel the need
to defend myself about critiques
But there’s always this void in my heart

Maybe I should have gone into Fashion
Maybe I should have been a funeral director
Maybe I should have gone into English
Maybe I should have been their perfect little daughter.

But who knows, I can’t change it now.
And hell I don’t have the money
to go back to school now.