The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

Mana’s alternate identities, the Gothic Lolita and the Vampiric
Aristocrat, are embodied in his work as a fashion designer with his two
ongoing ranges, the Elegant Gothic Lolita (EGL) (Fig. 16) and Elegant
Gothic Aristocrat (EGA) (Fig. 17) for his Moi-même-Moitié label, a successful
higher-end brand with a few specialist boutiques across Japan and, more
recently, a flagship store in Paris. *
Mana has taken these personae from stage to everyday life and carried
them through to his own designs. While he was most often the Lolita in the
Mizer days, he has more commonly presented himself as the androgynous
Aristocrat for his more recent musical project Moi Dix Mois, reserving his
female image usually for the purpose of modelling his EGL collections.
Even in regard to performance, Mana is emphatic that his attire is never
costume but his “day-to-day clothes”. 10
* Note that Elegant Gothic Lolita (EGL) is often used to describe the entire Lolita movement.
However this term should only be used in reference to the creative output of Mana who has since
1999 applied EGL and its male or unisex variant EGA (Elegant Gothic Aristocrat) to his ranges for
Moi-même-Moitié. Also note that the collections for these ranges are newly designed for each season
and only the titles remain unchanged.
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