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The Lolita Fashion Industry
According to Mariko Suzuki, Gothic & Lolita first appeared in the “creative
environment around Osaka” in the 1990s. 45 The most notable of the earliest
labels from this region are Marble, Visible and Victorian Maiden (Fig. 56), all
successful producers of Lolita garments still to this day. However, Macias
and Evers claim that the look originally came off the streets, with the
forerunner being the Nagomo-gal trend. These Nagomo girls, who followed the
music of the Nagomo Records label, * “liked to make their own clothes,
constructing strange fashions that toyed with a surreal vision of childhood
not too far away from Alice in Wonderland”. 46
* This recording label folded in 1987.
This childlike do-it-yourself
style, which was often combined with vintage clothing to create an eclectic,
quaint, old-world, sweet little-girl image, was formally marketed in the 1980s
by Pink House (founded in 1973), Milk, and Emily Temple Cute, and has
become known as Dolly Kei. As discussed earlier in this chapter, Mana
acknowledges that Lolita-like clothing was indeed around, albeit unnamed,
before he took it to the stage in the early 1990s and transformed the sweeter
aspects to give it a Gothic edge.
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