J-fashion: Hime Gyaru Photoshoot - Part I

Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed, Writeup

J-fashion is one of my secret fascinations, and recently Hime Gyaru style has really caught my attention. Hime Gyaru is an indulgent and elegant style, girls who follow this style look for dresses with an abundance of ruffles and bows. They drape themselves with pearls, roses, sparkling jewels and more bows! To complete the look, girls will tease and curl their peroxided hair into huge bouffant styles. They look like real princesses!

The most famous Hime Gyaru store in Japan is Jesus Diamante, have a look at the site if you’re curious. It is completely in Japanese, but pictures speak across language barriers ;)

Marlene Lim approached me about modelling in a shoot, mentioning J-fashion amongst other things and I ran with this particular idea. I enlisted the help of my friend Cheryl in styling, she is quite knowledgeable about this style, she has travelled to Japan several times and keeps up with the trends through magazines and videos. I had Jane Wong onboard for makeup - I discovered she also has a secret fascination with this particular style.

Lowlights

Restricted Space

We worked in a spare room out the back of my house. There’s barely room for the backdrop, even before I put up the light stands and umbrellas. I took more close crops of Marlene’s face and torso for this reason. I also did that because she looked so darn cute!

Temperamental Flash

Every 2 or 3 photographs, the flash I used to light up the legs did not work. I could not find the spare pair of batteries sp I grabbed the first lot I could find, which were a freebie pack. I suspect they were too low power to work properly - please tell me this is a viable theory, I’d hate to think the flash itself was faulty.

There were not a lot of lowlights, so let’s move onto the positives!

Highlights

Styling

Having the help of Cheryl in sourcing and making materials was a massive relief. She remembered this awesome Dotti dress when nothing else in the shops was suitable. I bought it in a size Medium in the hopes that one day I can wear it. Jane laughs when I say things like that!


The dress was clipped at the back to the model’s size, she’s a lot smaller than a medium for sure!

I bought a metre of black satin to make the bows - we made a few little small ones for the hair, which we lated hot glued to hair clips. I learned that hot glue doesn’t stick particularly well to metal. We made bows for the shoes and decided to use sticky tape on them to attach to Marlene’s shoes. I left Cheryl with the task of making a giant bow for the front of the dress, a week later she produced an amazingly straight bow for us to use! Cheryl lined it with a canvas material inside to hold its shape better.

We made the necklace together: Cheryl masterminded the design, I bought the materials and we put it together as a team!

The Wig

I think it speaks for itself. The wig is fantastic quality. I could even wash it if I wanted to, but I’m scared the curls will wash out to a small extent. It saved a heap of time on hair styling, as it came pre-curled and only required a bit of combing to settle the way we wanted it. I cannot thank my friends Shasta and Christine enough for helping get my hands on this gem. I try it on when nobody is looking.

Here’s Marlene wearing a wig cap, she looked adorable with it on:

And then after the wig went on:

The Backdrop

It was a great relief when the backdrop came together. On Thursday before the shoot, Cheryl and I were stood in the middle of Spotlight scratching our heads. Initially, we decided that a bubblegum pink backdrop would be wonderful and picked out the material. We then stumbled upon this rose backdrop and changed plan completely, which I am very thankful for. In hindsight, a pink backdrop would have looked tacky.

The materials I purchased to go into the backdrop were:

  • rose curtain material
  • yellow gold organza
  • creamy-gold satin
  • artificial flowers

Here are some photographs of the backdrop being deconstructed:

I discovered I have magical draping abilities with a box of safety pins and the cream-gold satin. It is all pretty straightforward, I just used safety pins, elastic bands, clamps and more safety pins! I hear you can get cheap clamps from Bunnings.

Makeup

We had lots of fun discussing makeup tips for asian features and how to make the eyes look bigger :) Marlene came wearing coloured contacts and bought a heap of fake eyelashes from overseas to choose from! I’m not sure exactly what went on with makeup, during this time I was running around putting up the backdrop and making chicken nuggets for us to snack on ;)

I know that we ended up doubling up the eyelashes, and strategically put eyeliner on the bottom lid to make the eyes look rounder and open them up.

I also know that it looked awesome, thanks to Jane!

Having Fun

I do not really know what to write about this so here are some pictures:

I had a great time and am really happy with the results of the shoot and the effort that everyone put in to making it a success. Thanks guys!

I have to get back to postwork on this shoot now, look for Part II of this post for the final images!

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    Permalink | October 14th, 2008

    7 Responses to “J-fashion: Hime Gyaru Photoshoot - Part I”

    1. Adam Says:
      October 14th, 2008 at 12:56 am

      Wow… Thanks for sharing all that Sabrina!

      I like how you’ve put it all together, pulled it all apart for us and the end result is fantastical! Fantasticle.

    2. Cherany Says:
      October 14th, 2008 at 1:34 am

      Japanese girls kick American girls asses when it comes to style! I could just live there. Except for the fact that I’d starve… but hey, I could fit into their tiny little clothes better if that happened! At 110 pounds, I’m afraid I’d be quite the tubbo there. :/

      I looked at that site once before & wanted SO many dresses! I’m more into bright colors and don’t like pearls, so I’d have to style them up my own way, but the black & pink roses look, all those ruffles & curls - LOVE!

    3. sab Says:
      October 14th, 2008 at 8:30 am

      @Adam: Thanks for dropping by, I love making up new words too ;)

      @Cherany: I agree, I love the variety they have over in Japan, there are a million and one fashion subcultures.

      Why would you starve? From what I can tell, Japanese food is tasty!

      I love it when people draw out bits of other fashion subcultures and make it their own, styling it up slightly differently. If you ever get your hands on a dress like this, I’d love to see what you would put together with it!

    4. moonie Says:
      October 15th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

      hey sab! =) hehe back with more posts i see =) the dress, styling and design for the backdrop were all so pretty! i love the dress especially - want to wear it when i look at the pics haha :D

    5. sab Says:
      October 16th, 2008 at 9:35 am

      @ moonie: Yep, I’m trying to update this more regularly. You would look really cute in that dress ;)

    6. moonie Says:
      October 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm

      aww thx sab hehe ^^

    7. Sabatomic » Blog Archive » Hime Gyaru J-fashion Finished Images! Says:
      November 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

      [...] are the final processed photographs from the Hime Gyaru photoshoot I wrote about a couple weeks back. I mocked up a fake magazine cover of a fictitious magazine called “agehu”. I tried to [...]

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