Reviving Japanese Fashion’s Rebel Child

The ‘twenty-year rule’ is known to be a way of predicting when a trend will resurface after its peak. If we were to look back twenty years from 2022, we would find ourselves in the height of pop punk, with bands like Green Day and Blink 182 topping the charts with all their angsty attitude. As we take a look at the world now, we see an updated version of these hormonal, teenage feelings with artists such as Olivia Rodrigo taking the world by storm and representing the Gen Z girls of today. This attitude has already begun bleeding into fashion too with Robert Pattinson’s punk look for GQ being reposted everywhere on social media and the anti-fashion movement promoting edgier looks by brands like Celine and Acne Studios. One brand that has resurfaced from this recycled trend is Nobuhiko Kitamura’s Hysteric Glamour. Rooted in 60s and 70s American youth culture, it was made for the youth counterculture of 80s Japan and would later become a big player in the streetwear takeover of 90s Harajuku. “I wasn’t satisfied with the style of the 80’s and it was Hysteric Glamour that was built on the basis of ideas from the culture of the 60’s and 70’s” says Kitamura himself on why he started the label in the first place. 

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Founded in 1984 after Kitamura graduated from Tokyo Mode Gakuin Fashion School, he started working for the brand Ozone Community, one of the early adopters of the punk aesthetic in Japan and the people that offered Kitamura to start his own label. The name, as Kitamura says in an interview with Empty Room magazine, was decided by combining “Patti Smith’s hysterical stage presence and Blondie’s Deborah Harry’s glamorous feeling.” His fascination with Americana culture started from a young age as he tells us: “in the 60’s and 70’s, many exciting works were born - movies, art, music, a lot of new styles were born by fusing with British culture.” This led him to reference different types of American media from rock and punk music to pop art to even vintage porn which explains his erotic graphics that are signature to his design language. 

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Unlike the other emerging designers from his era such as Kawakubo, Miyake and Yamamoto, Kitamura’s decision against commercialising his brand came with its reason. From the very beginning, he knew that he wanted to make clothing that resonated with his own personal interests and styles, even stating in an interview with Nylon that he had to turn to reading because “no one was doing what I was doing. I had no teachers and no experience.” It wasn’t done without hesitation but he made a new path for himself that would lead to self acceptance, saying: “Hysteric Glamour started thinking that it would be okay to have a fashion brand born from (Western references from the 60s and 70s).” The result is a clear understanding of Japanese youth’s zeitgeist through the merging of beauty and chaos that was unheard of at the time. Daisy, a Hysteric Glamour enthusiast and the figure behind @hysteric.fashion, agrees, saying: “it was quite a quintessential brand of that era of Japanese street style - that brand gave a lot of inspiration to other brands and how people dressed at the time.” By avoiding high fashion and being a Mansion Maker (a term used to describe those that make the garments themselves at arranged ateliers), he was able to create cheaper, accessible clothing that the younger generation could proudly wear knowing that this was an additional way to rebel against the mainstream. 

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However, his designs transcended the popularity that lay within youth counterculture and began being championed by the real rebels of the late 80s and 90s as it entered the international market. Punk Rock icons such as Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth, the latter being his first collaborators, were seen in Hysteric Glamour as well as his own musical idols like Marc Lebon and the Sex Pistols. 

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Now thirty years since its boom in the 90s, Hysteric Glamour has made its way back to the limelight. “I am very happy to be able to do something with artists of different generations,” says Kitamura as a recent collaboration with Supreme and an upcoming project with Kiko Kostadinov is even more evidence that they have marked their return. The cyclical nature of fashion is inevitable and Kitamura agrees, saying: “I think it’s the same phenomenon that we sought for in culture in the 60’s, 70’s and the 80’s. Today’s youth revives the culture created by youth in the 1990’s and 2000’s and it will lead to a new culture again.” Whilst it has kept its punk undertones, Hysteric Glamour’s attitude in the current fashion climate has taken a more tame form as Daisy from @hysteric. fashion says: “I think people who wear it now are people who want to wear an outfit that does have some element of fun or cuteness to it. [...] I do think it is punk but to me, it’s done in a different way - a cute, punk kind of thing.” 

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With global lockdowns and an abundance of time spent alone, these pandemic-induced situations were always bound to stimulate the reminiscence of the past, triggering feelings of sadness and loneliness that would force teenage angst to its peak and instinctively, rebellion. Although the brand’s demeanour has reformed to be slightly softer and ‘cuter’, the resonance in teenage emotions and the attitude of Hysteric Glamour is a natural marriage that has been re-lived over 20 years since its peak. Kitamura always saw that as his intention and knew that his timeless designs would see new life eventually as he says: “I’m glad that the sensibility of today’s young people merged with my sensibility when I was still young. I’ve always wanted to make clothes that are worth finding at second hand clothing stores for young people of the new era years later from when I started Hysteric Glamour.”