argumate:

kontextmaschine:

argumate:

it’s funny how “French maid” has been replaced by “Japanese pastiche of French maid” in the popular consciousness.

I assume the French maid thing got started when English aristocrats hired them as fashion consultants, and it seems fair now that fashion and food have also migrated from Paris to Tokyo.

Honestly Japan did the same thing with “girl in a bunny suit”, “attractive young nurse”, “uniformed schoolgirl” and “nun”, it’s like they’re trying to catch up

well you see during the Meiji Restoration under intense pressure to compete on the global stage and avoid being colonised by Western powers Japan sent out envoys to Europe and America who brought back novel ideas and vital reforms for the army, navy, civil service, and pornography,

Also it’s not really that Tokyo replaced Paris, more that there are two distinct fashion circuits now, the older New York-Paris-Milan Atlantic one and a new LA-Tokyo Pacific one that Australia’s probably better networked to.

A lot of “streetwear” stuff over the last two decades has to do with the emergence of this new circuit, as the capital of the American activewear and athletic shoe industries Portland’s probably a more important node in it than SF or Seattle, really.