Jrock Revolution

Happy Sunday everyone!  How are you all doing?

I know a majority of the posts here have focused on girls’ fashion, but today I’m going to talk a bit about a street fashion known as gyaru-o! 

Have you ever heard of the gyaru (gal) style for girls?  Well gyaru-o is the guy version of it!  Its etymology comes from a combination of English, French, and Japanese.  They took the English word ‘guy’, the French word for boy ‘garçon’, and the Japanese character for male 男 (in this case read as simply ‘O’), put it all together and got gyaru-o!

 Like gyaru, gyaru-o have tanned skin and dyed hair, usually blonde or a lighter brown and often with streaks.  Other common characteristics include having medium hair with lots of volume on the top, having a slim figure and wearing slimming clothes, often having burnt skin from tanning, wearing the bottom of their pants inside their boots, wearing lot of accessories, wearing large sunglasses, wearing pointed shoes, wearing engineer boots, wearing animal print like leopard or zebra, wearing colored pants in the summer, and wearing a lot of black in the winter.  Compared to what it used to look like (looking more messy and kind of like ‘yankees’ and such), since 2000 the typical outfit includes something like a tailored jacket and a dress shirt and jeans, presenting a much more clean look.

 Within the gyaru-o fashion, there are some subgenres that you’ll find:

-       Surfer:  This would include something like a raglan t-shirt (think of a baseball shirt), wappen jeans (jeans that have a design like a crest), and a down vest

-       American Casual:  A typical outfit would include a checkered or flannel shirt, ‘destroyed’ vintage jeans, and engineer boots.

-       Hard American Casual:  A racing jacket is key to this style.

-       Work style:  You would wear something like overalls or coveralls (aka jumpsuit) with engineer boots.

-       Rock style:  Take gyaru-o and add a rock taste to it with skulls, spikes, and leather.  Recently this style seems to be the most popular.

 There are many other very similar styles that are related to gyaru-o like onii-kei and kireime-kei, but I’ll touch on those another day.

 The premier magazine for gyaru-o is Men’s egg, which is not surprisingly the guy version of the gyaru magazine egg.  In it you’ll find popular gyaru-o brands like PEACEONMARS, FUGA, and JACKROSE.  There is also a Men’s egg youth which targets younger readers around ages 16-17.  I came across what was called Men’s egg core which focuses more on attracting girls and Men’s egg Bitter which is for older and more adult men, but they don’t seem to be consistently running like the main two magazines.

 Because of gyaru-o’s affinity to gyaru and yankee, they aren’t generally welcomed.  They can be rude, loud, and obnoxious, but it is not expected of them.  Gyaru-O are notoriously known for being playboys, especially since many are hosts in host clubs.  Many can always be found at clubs and parties in Shinjuku and Shibuya in the Tokyo area and in Osaka you can find them in Amerikamura (aka Amemura) and Shinsaibashi.

If you’re a guy and you want to try out this style, pick up an issue of Men’s egg, Men’s Knuckle, or Men’s Digger and head to the salons!

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