This article is from WeChat official account:Interface News (ID: wowjiemian), reporter: Zhang Xinyu
A while ago, a video of the Shanghai CP26 Comic Exhibition appeared on Weibo’s hot search. In the video, a girl in a skirt took pictures with her hands on the ground and stretched forward, and was scolded by another exhibitor, “Don’t discredit JK anymore.”
This incident suddenly pushed the JK uniform into the public eye, and further accelerated the JK uniform’s out of the circle.
JK has indeed ushered in a small peak of public opinion in 2020. If you often use Douyin and visit Taobao, you are no longer unfamiliar with this term. Its frequency of appearance is no less than that of Hanfu and Lolita in the previous two years.
In fact, when some people are still asking what a JK uniform is, a complete ecology has been formed within the JK uniform cultural circle.
The girls in JK uniforms were reprimanded by the audience for their indecent poses, and the photographers secretly photographed the skirts behind them
Picture source: Weibo user@加点芋圆吧
Is wearing Japanese student uniforms to make up for Chinese youth?
JK means “girls high school student”, throughIn the usual sense, JK uniforms refer to the uniforms of high school students worn by Japanese women.
The styles of JK uniforms are divided into “Western-style uniforms” and “Sailor suits”. Western-style uniforms are divided into shirts, skirts, vests, cardigans, etc., and sailor suits can be divided into Sapporo placket, Kanto placket, Kansai placket and In Nagoya, there are different numbers and different colors on different collars. For example, “Kanto placket white three” is a Kanto placket uniform with three white plackets.
People who don’t know JK uniforms may not know how popular this kind of clothing is among young girls.
Tmall told JiFashion that the number of searches related to JK uniforms on Tmall in the first half of the year doubled from the same period last year.
In the “China Uniform Hall” of JK Uniforms Taobao store, a 128-yuan JK uniform pleated skirt can sell more than 3,700 pieces in a month, and the monthly sales of a single item exceed 470,000 yuan. Another big shop “Rabbit Sewing” (formerly Rabbit Jishe) implements the pre-sale system, and will return to the market on April 18 to sell the “Gentle The one-shot uniform skirt is priced at 118 yuan, and the sales volume reaches 300,000 yuan within 25 minutes of being on the shelf, and the sales amount is as high as 35.4 million yuan.
On the evening of April 18th, the gentle one-cut skirt of Tu Su Sei (formerly Tu Ji She) was put on the shelf in 25 minutes, and the sales volume reached 300,000. Source: Tu Se Se
Many Chinese girls like JK uniforms because they are influenced by Japanese film and television dramas, cartoons and even the two-dimensional culture.
In Japan as a regulated society, uniforms have penetrated into people’s lives regardless of occupation and age. In the book “Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential” (Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential), Sano Katsuhiko, the museum director of the school uniform company Tombow, said, “The Japanese attach great importance to uniforms and are proud of their role in society. The police must look like police, the nurses must look like nurses, and of course female students too.”
In 1873, Kobe University, the predecessor of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, was the first to introduce Western-style school uniforms. In 1888, school uniforms were popularized in middle schools across Japan, among which female uniforms were mainly sailor uniforms.
Since the 1980s, a large number of school uniforms based on sailor suits have been integrated into Japanese pop culture. The girl idol group “Kitten Club” became famous at the time as “Don’t Let Me Take Off Sailor Suits”, Japanese TV series and Japanese comics It often takes students in school uniforms as the protagonist.
When Zhang Chengyue entered the JK uniform in 2017, she watched the Japanese TV series “One Kiss” and was fascinated by the protagonists’ school uniforms, so she bought her first uniform skirt.
Japanese drama “One Kiss”
When Zhang Chengyue wears JK uniforms, this kind of clothing is still a very small group in China, and Zhang Chengyue is a small group who likes it. “It is not easy to wear a shirt, it is more special.”
In China, JK uniforms, Hanfu and Lolita, are collectively referred to as the “Three Hangs”, and are also called the “Three Sisters of Bankruptcy.” Hanfu and Lolita have gradually become popular from around 2012, when JK uniforms were just introduced from Japan by a small group of people, but they were even smaller in comparison.
Some people who like niche clothing will flow between the “three pits”, and many girls who wear Lolita also start to wear JK uniforms a few years later. Prospective senior Lin Taiyu is also one of them.
Lin Hairtail wears Lolita skirts from about 15 years old, and likes JK uniforms in college. After entering the pit for more than two years, Lin Taiyu has owned 40 or 50 sets of JK uniforms and has become a “grass planter” with close to 8,000 fans on Weibo. He often shares his JK uniforms and makes up his mind not to wear other clothes every day. .
However, Lin Taiyu started to wear JK uniforms not just becauseIn order to jump from one niche clothing to another niche clothing, the main reason is that she believes that JK uniforms, as Japanese school uniforms, have a sense of youth that Chinese school uniforms do not have.
Lin Taiyu doesn’t like his high school uniform. “Sportswear is too ugly. Wearing a JK uniform in college makes up for my previous youth.”
She said that she wanted to put on all the skirts and take a photo while she was still young, “in this way can I catch my last youth.”
Lin Hairtail uniform skirt Picture source: Lin Hairtail
Explosive business and JK police
Now, Lin Taiyu obviously feels that JK uniforms are no longer so niche. “Especially after this year, you can see a person wearing JK uniforms after walking seven steps.”
The popularity of JK uniforms is largely driven by short video platforms. Many JK uniform lovers recalled the interface fashion. Around 2018, a group of Internet celebrities who were active in Douyin and Kuaishou liked to wear JK uniforms to shoot videos, which made many outsiders know this niche clothing. At that time, many people didn’t know what a JK uniform was. Seeing a similar uniform skirt would call it a “little skirt on the vibrato”.
As if overnight, a large group of outsiders in JK uniforms discovered the beauty of this costume. However, the JK uniform circle, like all subcultural groups, is united inside but with strong xenophobia. The influx of newcomers makes the circle of “chain of contempt” more and more obvious.
In the JK uniform circle, the copycat uniform is the bottom end of the chain of contempt.
To know what a copycat uniform is, you must first know what a genuine uniform is.
Genuine JK uniforms can be divided into Japanese and domestic. Among them, the day system is divided into school supply and non-school supply. School supplies are the uniforms of Japanese universities, while non-school supplies are uniforms launched by Japanese commercial brands. Conomi, Eastboy, KURI-ORI, etc. are the more famous JK uniform brands.
The Japanese-made non-school confession refers to the uniforms launched by Japanese commercial brands. Picture source: Conomi
However, day school supplies generally require student IDs to purchase. Japanese school supplies available in China are usually second-hand uniforms and are difficult to buy. Japanese brands such as Conomi and Eastboy are more expensive, so they are made in China. JK uniforms came into being.
Domestic JK uniforms are uniforms originally designed by painters and then made by shop proofing, or domestic shops that are authorized to produce by the day school.
The handle of the domestic JK uniform was originally designed by the painter. Picture source: Tsukiye HOUSE
If a merchant reproduces the lattice pattern originally designed by a domestic painter without authorization, or produces a uniform similar to the Japanese school supply design without the authorization of the Japanese manufacturer, the JK uniform produced It is a cottage.
Different from the appearance, the shirts and tops of the genuine JK uniforms are basically square, wide and short, without showing the waist, the placket line is not reflective, the grid skirt is regular, the overall tone and layout are uniform, and the skirt is pleats It has to be sharp.
The JK uniform girls attach so much importance to copyright and resist copycats. The original intention is to maintain the few shops in the circle that have original designs and let the circle develop in a healthy way.
A spontaneous copyright protection team has even formed in the circle. When someone in the JK uniform circle points out that someone else has bought a copycat skirt that does not comply with the rules in the circle, it is easy to be mocked as a “JK policeman” by passers-by who do not understand the origin of “copyright first” in the JK uniform circle.
LOFTER user “Wu Yue Shiri” said that the three pits including JK uniforms, Hanfu, and Lolita were initially used by a group of enthusiasts to generate electricity. The scale of production is small. Stores that maintain original designs encourage their development. , Lest no one makes original designs in the future, it is difficult to buy good-looking skirts, everyone can only buy Japanese brands at a high price.
At this stage, “don’t buy mountains” or “buy mountains without knowing mountains” are the most basic rules in this circle.
However, as JK uniforms became popular, more and more businesses discovered the potential of this market and plunged into it. Several big stores are no longer small workshops in the past, and JK uniforms have become a business pursuing explosive styles.
The success of the gentle knife is not accidental, it satisfies several conditions for becoming a hit.
A full set of gentle one-cut picture source: Weibo user@影未_
The first element of a hot style is a good nameword.
At the earliest, day school skirts usually had a name in China, usually the area or school where the uniform was located.
Later, some domestic JK uniform shops also began to name the lattice skirts, such as the Chinese brand’s Yamabuki, the setting sun of the Yanzi’s house, the snow cherry of the Tsukiye’s family, and the Jingdou’s Lanai, which arranged and combined various artistic conceptions. Good distinction.
The name given to the skirt by the rabbit stitch is more specific. In addition to the gentle knife, there are also lemon sea salt, linear algebra and gaming girls. “When a girl who loves playing games hears, isn’t the’e-sports girl’ me, then I must buy it.” Lin Taiyu said.
The “e-sports girl” stitched by rabbits Picture source: Lin Taiyu
Another element of the explosion is the special design.
Different from other uniform skirts before, there are a lot of dense threads on the gentle one-cut skirt, which can be regarded as creating a new style. Starting with a gentle knife, more and more shops will make skirts that highlight thin lines. Lin Taiyu said that everyone wants to make a gentle knife.
In addition, a skirt that is not only appreciated by insiders, can easily become a hot style.
Zhang Chengyue believes that girls who have been in the JK circle for a long time prefer the sense of school offerings, “This way they dress like Japanese high school female students.”
Skirts with a sense of school supply usually have a low-key color and low color saturation. Dark green and ink blue are typical school supply colors. Outsiders are easily attracted to pink, sky blue and bright yellow checkered skirts. These are colors that the insiders think are not enough for school, but they may get better sales.
Since this year, even mature fashion brands have been eyeing this market. Lak Ting, a women’s clothing brand under Peacebird, has recently released a plaid skirt in collaboration with Paradise Umbrella. There are 4 colors in total, namely, the pink moonflower, the blue-brown starfall autumn island, and the purple-yellow autumn leaves. And the basic cyan sea.
Le Ding said to UIFashion that consumers in the JK uniform circle and fans of JK uniform were invited to discuss what color grid they like, and they were invited to vote on the color of the grid in the early stage of product design.
Latting and Paradise Umbrella’s cooperation to launch a lattice skirt. Picture source: Leding
However, among a large number of stores that are optimistic about the commercial potential of JK uniforms and enter the market, there are many stores that do not have original awareness and do not pay attention to copyright. UIFashion found that a large number of fake uniform stores on Taobao were registered between 2017 and 2020.
In this case, if consumers do not do their homework in advance, it is difficult not to buy copycats but only genuine ones.
The male gaze of JK uniform
In fact, the JK police are not only obsessed with copyright issues, but also require insiders and outsiders not to stigmatize JK uniforms.
One week before the opening of the Shanghai Comic Show, a girl in a JK uniform lifted up a shirt and exposed her underwear for the photographer to take pictures at the Guangzhou Comic Show. This girl with the online name “Little Yunai” is suspected to be a “Welfare Ji” who sells large-scale photos in exchange for money. Some people call it “a mouse shit and a pot of porridge”.
The girl with the screen name “Little Yunai” lifted up a shirt and exposed her underwear for the photographer to take pictures at the Guangzhou Comic Show
At the Shanghai comic exhibition site, the reason why girls posing on the ground were reprimanded because the audience claimed that they had “smeared” JK uniforms. Many rules in the JK uniform circle also intentionally or unconsciously maintain the purity of the JK uniform. For example, it is emphasized that the orthodox JK uniform does not show the waist and the skirt is not too short.
This circle is so sensitive, largely because part of the unorthodox JK culture has been alienated in Japan to become a part of the porn industry.
In the eyes of some people, the JK uniform is a symbol and fantasy object that can erase individual female differences.
The pornography of JK uniforms means that part of it comes from the Japanese culture of compensated dating. This phenomenon has prevailed since the 1990s, when almost all people in Japan were indulging in material enjoyment at the peak of the bubble economy. High school girls would exchange services such as chatting and accompany shopping with guests for money or luxury goods. School uniforms become the work clothes for aided students, so they are given a sexual meaning.
Until today, it is still very common for Japanese female students to wear JK uniforms to aid dating. In the news documentary “Female Students for Sale in Japan” (Schoolgirls for Sale in Japan) produced by the youth media Vice in 2015, those wearing JK uniforms Underage female students held flyers in the streets of Akihabara, Tokyo, soliciting customers, walking with them, divination, and massage. These behaviors were called the frontline of underage prostitution in a human trafficking report in Japan.
Picture source: Screenshot of the VICE documentary “Female Students for Sale in Japan”
Although from July 1, 2017, women under the age of 18 are prohibited from engaging in compensated dating services.The law takes effect in Japan, but this does not stop JK uniforms from continuing to be a popular element in sex transactions.
As the sailor suit was integrated into various Japanese pop cultures at the end of the last century, pornographic comics and AVs have gradually flooded with sailor suit elements. A group of female idols wearing JK uniforms and virtual characters have been enthusiastically obsessed with uniform control in Japan. There are even tram morons who harass girls in sailor suits.
When the JK uniform came to China from Japan, the nuisance suffered by young girls was also copied.
Lin Taiyu often shares photos of herself wearing JK uniforms on Weibo and Zhihu, hoping to communicate with girls who like JK uniforms, but she receives harassing private messages from men almost every day.
Lin Hairtail tried to blacken it at first, but later found that it couldn’t blacken it at all. “Some people will even disgust you politely, “Hello Miss Sister, I am a foot control, you can sell your socks Give it to me?'”
Girls brought JK uniforms to China, hoping to express their beauty, but they wanted to get rid of the male gaze.
Some girls therefore ask people around them to “do better”, and those in the discipline circle maintain the purity of JK uniforms and remove the possible sexy in JK uniforms.
Now, although many newcomers are beginning to wear JK uniforms, some are gradually retreating. Some people do not agree with the rules of the circle, and some people simply no longer wear uniforms.
Zhang Chengyue has been working for two years and rarely wears JK uniforms.
“The JK uniform represents the carefree and carefree when reading, and it represents the meticulous care of yourself at that time.” After work, Zhang Chengyue no longer has time to think about clothes matching, and can’t spare time The makeup that matches the uniform makes it difficult to complete the ritual sense of wearing a JK uniform.
Lin Taiyu thought that she would enter the JK uniform first because she saw the photo of Zhihu blogger “Xiao Ximei” wearing the JK uniform, “She is very, very beautiful in the photo, and I have been following her until now. “
However, Miss Xi no longer wears JK uniforms. Lin Taiyu said, “She has grown up.”
This article is from WeChat official account:Interface News (ID: wowjiemian), reporter: Zhang Xinyu