Kwest For Kawaii

Monday, Jun. 18, 2001 By KATE DRAKE

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Moussy, a boutique located on the fifth floor of the 109 Building in Tokyo's Shibuya district, is dim, cramped and messy. The austere space communicates antifashion; there is nothing cool about the spartanic sloppiness. So why are hordes of ultra-trendy young girls lining up behind a velvet rope, eager to enter a shop whose untidy stacks of faded T shirts and cubbyholes stuffed with dark denim jeans remind one of little more than a misplaced garage sale? Here's a clue: amid the jumble of voices filling the shop as the girls paw excitedly through the clothes, one word can be heard again and again: kawaii.

Kawaii, an adjective usually mistranslated as simply "cute," has become much more than a word. It is a state of mind for Japanese teens, a modifier that means cool, bitchin', groovy, killer and I-love-it all rolled into one, then squared. For a clothing label trying to crack Asia's burgeoning teen fashion industry, business these days boils down to the quest for kawaii. Asian teenagers tend to wear today what Japanese teens wore a few minutes ago. And unlike the fashion industrial complex in the West, in which top designers and magazine editors dictate what's hot, Japan's teen fashion industry revolves entirely around what Tokyo girls say is kawaii. Every month, high schoolers in the capital spend roughly $275 each on gear and clothes�three times more than the average Japanese high schooler. (As a group, high-school girls in the country spend around $2.5 billion annually.) Most of that discretionary yen goes to the brand name with the newest, hottest, coolest style. And for those brands that capture that essence of kawaii, the potential markets stretch from Tokyo to Tashkent. Call it the Greater East Asia Ko-Kawaii Sphere. "Japan is the only country in Asia right now that is a genuine fashion force," explains Joanne Ooi, CEO of e-tailer StyleTrek.com. "Telling a teen customer that an item is popular in Japan is a huge selling point�it's on par with telling a tai tai (Hong Kong socialite) that John Galliano designed it."

What those Tokyo girls define as kawaii can be as cute as frilly pink shirts one day and as raunchy as a vinyl miniskirt the next. A year ago, the most popular items in Shibuya were Esperanza's light brown knee-high platform boots and black face paint�the so-called "gal" look. Now it's remade clothes, faded jeans and low-heeled pumps. Why the change? "I dressed gal style because it was popular. But everyone just got sick of it and besides, this new look is much more kawaii," says salesgirl Chie Sakakibara, 22. Hiroaki Morita, head of Teens' Network Ship, a consulting firm for companies targeting teens, believes the switch in tastes may also be a response to Japan's lingering economic malaise. The girls still wanna have fun, but they just don't want to blow a lot of cash doing it.

To keep up with kawaii, Japanese firms chasing youthful yen hire high schoolers as salesgirls, stylists and marketers. That's a necessity in a business where there are no seasons, only tsunami-size fashion trends that breeze through in weeks, months or, like, whenever. And when it comes to knowing exactly which shade of beige Tokyo's trendsetters want to wear and how low-slung they want their jeans, those teen-targeted labels recruit heavily from among the karisuma tenin (charismatic salesgirls) of the Shibuya 109 building. "They started hiring us because we wore different, interesting clothes and the magazines were using our pictures. For a while, everyone knew who I was," explains 23-year-old Mana Takai, now designer for Jassie, another trendsetting label. Almost in unison, every label that wanted to stay afloat asked their karisuma tenin to please, please design their clothes too. Even though most of them can't sew or draw and never went to design school, the labels recognize these women have a knack for channeling what is kawaii and what isn't�and that is all the companies want. That, and the yen: Jassie's sales, for instance, have increased 180% since Takai took over as designer two years ago.

Just being young and fashion-savvy has given Takai and the other designers an edge over the competition�they can intuit, to some extent, what will be popular next. It's far more an art than a science. "When I'm in Los Angeles I buy things I think are cute in used-clothing stores and change the color, size, emblem, whatever, to fit Japanese teens. I just decide what to do case by case with whatever pops into my head," Takai explains. Even firms without young designers find the traditional drawing-board-to-mock-up-to-sample-to-store-shelf cycle doesn't cut it in this industry. Tokyo girls, instead of company stylists, helm this multibillion-dollar market. "Once we put the shoe on the shelf, our customers and staff make suggestions and modifications to it," says Mutsumi Tanabe, the thirtysomething managing director of Kobe Leather Cloth Ltd., which owns Esperanza, the most popular shoe store inside 109. "So we remake the shoes, and keep on changing the shoe to meet the desires of our staff and customers." A servile and laborious process, but one that opened wallets across Japan: Esperanza's sales reached $95 million last year, up 20% from 1999.

The most profitable labels foster tight working relationships with Japan's myriad, ubiquitious teen fashion magazines. Karisuma tenin can spawn trends inside Shibuya, but they can't reach the countryside or abroad without a fashion mag's endorsement. Japan's high-school girls read, on average, at least five fashion magazines a month, which means the influence of the right Tokyo glossies can be huge. "If a magazine advertises a certain brand or look, girls will buy it," Takai says. The most popular ones tend to showcase karisuma tenin in their brand's clothes, launching waves of copy-cat teenagers who migrate to Shibuya seeking to emulate the photo spreads. The magazines also influence how the rest of Asia dresses. Cawaii (another transliteration of that omnipresent Japanese word), for example, has a Chinese version that is translated and distributed abroad.

Alas, kawaii is famously mercurial. Despite hiring young designers, listening to customers and developing relationships with magazines, no company can entirely predict when teen tastes may change. Sometimes girls want�NOW!�what a famous singer wears in her new video. (Ayumi Hamasaki's flower pins, for instance.) But trendy Tokyo girls soon tire of being copied by their country bumpkin cousins in Saitama and Okayama and start looking for newer, more kawaii looks to sport�almost as soon as they've attached those pins to their lapels. That creates a hothouse environment where a brand can go from unknown to saturation point in under a month. "Some brands in 109 retain high sales even while their popularity is already declining," says Morita. "This is because girls from outside Tokyo come to Shibuya and buy up all the brands that have already lost popularity among Tokyo girls."

The volatile nature of the rag trade can make victims of even the most committed fashion houses. Remember Alaia? Thierry Mugler? No? Why should you: they were staples for the bodycon youth of the early '90s but those brands just couldn't keep up with kawaii. The light-speed caprice of these Japanese teens has created a host of new challenges for Takai and 109's other designers: how to keep a label's signature style intact without it suddenly seeming as last year as, well, platform boots. Often, brands like Esperanza, which now hype their high-heeled mules instead of the platforms, forgo association with a certain look so that they can morph with current styles. Others, like Alba Rosa and Me Jane, married their style to extreme looks of the past and paid the price: those loud colors and hibiscus flowers might be selling in Beijing and Taipei, but no one in Harajuku is wearing the stuff.

Back in 109, Moussy is poised to become the hottest-selling label in the building, which means you'll soon be seeing knockoffs throughout Asia. Like most stores in that narrow gallery of boutiques, Moussy's floor space is less than 15 sq m, but since opening in May last year, sales have totaled around $9 million. Moussy's fashionista-in-chief Yoko Morimoto, 23, is a former karisuma tenin who is putting her own spin on kawaii. The look Moussy is flogging can best be described as otona (adult) type�sophisticated, chic, the look a girl wears when she wants some respect. It's a toned-down reaction to the big platforms, streaked blond hair and rebellious styles of the past few years. The Shibuya girls are all saying it's kawaii. And if you blink, you'll probably miss it.