Hello friends! Maniac here. Papermaiden had such a good time with that NSLE interview that I said, pitch me an idea for something that you’d like to write regularly, and she said, I want to write about fashion and stuff, and I said, knock yourself out, I bet people will like that. So give it a read and let her know what you think!

Welcome to Fashion Fortnight. In this bimensual column, you’ll find a (very self-indulgent) summary of what happened with idols in their para-musical jobs related to subculture and modelling. You may think of the Flash-type columns as a way to assemble all the great visual publications you’ve missed because you weren’t looking! In the Fashion Fortnight Features, you’ll find (most likely self-indulgent as well) more focused investigations into a specific topic or item that has been all the rage and is related to our beloved Homicidols.

Without further ado, get the links and some previews after the jump!

KERA, the Punk/Rock fashion magazine, whom Pikarin is contracted with, just stopped its paper publication in May to switch to a web-based format. While the readers may miss browsing through the pages, this announcement wasn’t the first of its kind. Other preeminent alternative Japanese fashion magazines such as CUTiE (1989–2015) and FRUiTS (1997–2017) have also stopped publication due to diminished sales. After a full month of publication, it could be said KERA kept its essence intact while making its content much more accessible for domestic and international fans alike.

Pikarin
As you likely know, the makai idol started her career in Popteen as a gyaru model. In KERA, she usually models fashions more befitting of an idol from hell. However, Pikarin had surprise for us in the July edition. She is currently into “Little Girl fashion for adults.” You can find these flashy cute fashion here and here.

She made a makeup tutorial of the look for the Kawaii Pateen channel (with multilingual close-captioning!). In case you don’t want to reproduce the look, it provides for bemusing insights into Pikarin’s train of thought.

Should you seek darkness to heal from all these peppy colours, Pikarin still has you covered with her “Shi”-ster/Death Nun outfit produced in collaboration with Kera Shop.

On the yamikawaii side, there’s an outfit photoshootas well as an interview with her.

Para-Pikarin
Outside the realm of demons, the hard/weird side of idols is well represented in KERA.
Rie (Formerly known as one-third of Ladybaby) is in this cute hair and makeup feature, accompanied by more traditional idols.

The lovely Risa from Dempagumi Inc. wears her beloved Lolita fashion here. The Wa-Lolita outfit seems to be goldfish themed!

Street Snaps
Cy8er as a three-member unit is featured in the July issue street snaps, posing as the Powerpuff Girls.

Keito from E-Yell has also caught the eye of KERA’s photographers due to her striking black and red outfit.

Vantan’s Design Institute Entrance Ceremony’s street snaps contains no idol, but provides great hope into the future designers who might dress our fashion forward idols. This other Risa in a Nana-Themed outfit will likely electrify you as much as it electrified me. You can’t go wrong mixing MILK and Vivienne Westwood in that colour scheme!

KERA is far from being the only alternative fashion magazine that has taken a turn toward digital. I’ll look into street snaps in general, Jabberwocky andMelt regularly to see if anything relevant to this website appears. If you’d like a physical magazine you can flip through, know that usually ZIPPER has Ano from You’ll Melt More! and some presence of Dempagumi Inc. I’ll hopefully be able to review the content of the fall edition and potentially the summer one as well.

Papermaiden, signing out!

P.S.: Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see more about. I will do my best to fulfill your requests.