Harajuku Street Fashion

Harajuku is one of the most popular fashion and shopping district in Tokyo, Japan, best known for its famous Harajuku Girls. For many young Japanese people, spending their time in Harajuku on the weekends is almost a necessity. Harajuku is always full of teenagers with outrageous outfits, expressing their identity through their fashion.

There is a variation of styles in the Harajuku fashion:
-Goth Lolita: entails dressing up like a Victorian doll with gothic, feminine and elegant dresses.
-Punk: involves wearing punk clothes like that of 70’s with makeup, piercing, and accessories.
-Cosplay: the term derives from “costume play”, which involves wearing outfits, often self-made, of cartoon, animation, and game characters.
-Wamono: involves mixing of traditional Japanese clothes with Western fashion.
-Kawaii: means “cute” in Japanese. Kawaii style puts a great emphasis on the cuteness of toys and animation characters.
-Decora: the term derives from “decoration”, and its style literally involves decorating oneself from head to toe with plastic toys and accessories.

Harajuku Girls mix, match, and integrate one or more of these styles to ultimately create their own, unique fashion. Harajuku Girls and their fashionable styles caught worldwide attention by American singer, Gwen Stefani, with her song “Harajuku Girls”.


Gwen Stefani – Harajuku Girls (Live)
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=ioRIo1EJN4w

fun pics

SomeThing Relevant

SomeThing Relevant (aka STR)
this is one of India’s most upcoming Jam band. All of the band members are from the city of Mumbai. They perform in many Music Clubs and concerts all over Mumbai and India itself.
They have 7 permanent members and have guest musicians all the time. These seven ‘’constants’’ consist of
Aazin (Lead Vocals)
Aalok (Percussion/vocals)
Jehangir (Drums/Percussion/Vocals)
Luis Chico (Piano/Vocals)
Ryan (Saxophone/vocals)
Stuart (Bass guitar/vocals)
Tanmay (Electric Guitar/vocals)
I find it quite brilliant how all of the members of the band contribute to the vocals, giving the audience a feel of a choir. Seeing them perform live is amazing. Especially Ryan, he is hilarious, always introducing each of the band members in funny ways to break the ice. They have the essence of famous bands such as ‘Dispatch’ and ‘Cat Empire’.
Most of their gigs are improv. They say the only reason why their music clicks is because they are such amazing friends and hence have such amazing chemistry coz they all know how each of them play their respective instruments.
They don’t have a particular genre they can be put under due to the lack of genre they embody. They could be put under the genre of ‘urban fusion’ if at all. They take inspiration from a number of popular and urban genres such as Rap, R&B, Blues, Funk, Punk and also a lot of Jazz. The vast expanse of their musical ability makes their gigs so much fun and gives it, its unpredictability. They are truly an inspiration to many young bands in the music scene in Mumbai.
you can download their music from, http://www.somethingrelevant.org/index.html
ENJOY !

VISUAL KEi

Visual Kei is a musical movement born in Japan in the early 80’s. Visual Kei band members, mostly men, often wear outrageous make-ups with flamboyant hairstyles, feminine accessories, and luxuriant costumes, usually paired with androgynous aesthetics. The “Kei” is Japanese for “style” or “type”, referring that its main focus is on visual aesthetics rather than its lyrics and music. Although, nowadays, their music has been largely influenced by western music, its original dramatization of the music was an influence of Kabuki theatre.
Although similarities can be drawn between several bands, its music style includes varieties of widely different genres such as pop, classical, rap, heavy metal, power metal, and electronic. Visual Kei is also known as VK, Visual Rock, or J-Rock, meaning all Japanese rock music.