My Second Online Harajuku Fashion Walk and Neon Magazine Interview - The Ichigo Bunny

 Hello buns,

Welcome back to another blog! I took part in the 7th Online Harajuku Fashion Walk and it was my second time taking part. It took place on Saturday 8th August 11am JST (3am U.K time) and the founders of Neon Magazine joined us during this meeting. If you would like to read about what the Harajuku Fashion Walk is and what my first experience was like you can read about it here.

Happy reading,

Keri AKA The Ichigo Bunny

xoxo

HFW 8th August 2020

The Theme and outfit planning

The theme for this months HFW was magical creature and I decided to dress up as a Halloween Bunny. When this theme I really struggled to think of a magical creature I could dress as that was low cost and didn't involve buying any new clothes. Gwyd suggested dressing as an jackalope which was a great idea until I realised that I had left my antlers back at my Nans house. I then decided to go as a Halloween bunny after getting some inspiration from my Amuse pumpkin bunny plush.

To bring my Halloween bunny image to life I wanted to wear black lace and soft, floaty materials. I had a lace top in my drawer that I had never really worn and I knew that it would be perfect for this. I had also recently bought a black tulle skirt off depop and I thought that it would look beautiful paired with this lace top as it had the soft floaty layers that I was after. There's something about a tulle skirt that gives me witchy goth vibes and that I wanted to recreate that feeling in my outfit. To finish it I ordered a black lace rabbit eared headband off eBay.

For my make-up I decided to go for a larme-kei inspired look. I've recently discovered larme kei and I'm really enjoying the style as the make-up is the more mature style of what I used to wear in school and the outfits can be a bit more flexible and dip towards my love of black lace and darker styles. I had found a video on how to do a more gothic larme kei make-up style on YouTube and I decided to follow that for my make-up for the fashion walk.

The Day of the Fashion Walk

On the day of the fashion walk I had to wake up at 2am to get ready for the 3am start. Thankfully Gwyd stayed up so I could nap before the fashion walk, I would of been so so tired if I had had to stay up! I managed to get ready with 20 minutes spare to make myself a coffee, having set up my laptop ready for the call before I had gone to bed. I felt nervous but excited and was looking forward to seeing who would be joining in with the zoom meeting.

At 3 am the meeting started and like the last time I had joined, we spent the first few minutes waiting for everyone to join in. After about 5- 10 minutes of waiting Junnyan and Maria started the meeting and let everyone know what the agenda was for the meeting and confirmed the interviewees, which was only 3 of us as there was supposed to be 5 but 2 people didn't turn up for the meeting. The first part of the zoom meeting was for the interview with Neon Magazine with the 3 participants and the second half was for talking about our magical creature fashion.

Maria then introduced Nennen and Poyo from Neon magazine, explained what the Magazine was and the Neon Mag team introduced themselves to everyone. Neon Magazine is a Web Magazine dedicated to showing us kawaii styles on the streets of Harajuku and their Instagram handle is @neon_0424. With the introductions done we jumped straight into the interview!

The first question that was asked was our age, where in the world we lived and and what we do for work. I wasn't surprised to find out that I was the oldest but it was interesting to hear that the other two people are students and to find out what they were studying. The second question asked us about how we discovered Harajuku fashion, who our idols are and if there was anyone that inspired us. My answer to this was Gwen Stefani and explained that hearing her sing about Harajuku inspired me to Google imagine Harajuku fashion, and that anime and finding images from FRUiTS Magazine online. I was asked what anime inspired me and I mentioned Sailor Moon and Full Metal Alchemist. While Sailor Moon can be expected, I think maybe that people where surprised by my answer of FMA as it's not an anime that you expect to inspire people with J-Fashion. FMA inspired me with my fashion because of it's strong bold female characters and they inspired me to be as bold and strong with my choices in every part of my life. The third and final question was about our school uniform, if it was a strict uniform or relaxed, and if we was allowed to dye our hair/ get piercings ext. I told Neon Mag about how my uniform was strict and the jumpers were a poor quality fit. I then told them about how I rebelled against the school uniform standard by wearing black skinny jeans instead of smart black trousers and converse instead of smart shoes, and despite getting into trouble with some teachers my form tutor was very supportive of us developing our own personal sense of style.

After the interview we had a quick chance to ask Neon any questions that we had, and I was so annoyed with myself for not asking anything while I had the chance! As no one asked any questions we cut to a short break at 3.30 and told that the second part of the meeting would be starting at 11.40/ the time equivalent in our time zones.

After our break it was time to introduce our magical creatures! This months Zoom Leader was Zanahoria and she kick started the magical creature segment. I was so impressed with the ideas that everyone had come up with and it was lovely to see some creatures that I haven't even thought of, like vampires! I've posted some pictures of my look below so you can see what I wore!

Once again, I had a lovely time. It felt like I was hanging out with friends old and new and it was another wholesome experience. I really enjoyed meeting Neon Magazine and being interviewed by them, I hope one day I can improve upon my Japanese enough to be able to interview them. They really are such lovely ladies and I love their Instagram content, which I have linked here for you all to check out. I really enjoyed that the questions weren't just about fashion and that we was asked about who we are and I really enjoyed the school fashion question, it was fun to reminisce about my personal fashion at school.

I'm really looking forward to the September meet-up and seeing what the theme will be! It's a lovely community to be a part of and I hope that more people will come and join us! I know I said this last time but I really enjoy the comfort of dressing up at home and spending some time online with other j-fashion and kawaii lovers.

Thanks for reading, hope to see you soon! x