Cute Kawaii Clothing, Kawaii Accessories and Kawaii Gifts

Are You Kawaii? – Well if you like cupcakes, bunnies and pink, than there’s a pretty good chance that you are. In Japan ‘Kawaii’ essentially means ‘cute’ and has become a huge fashion movement, a national outlook, and of course big business. Kawaii has come to dominate every aspect of Japanese popular culture from entertainment, clothing and food through to the mannerisms and behaviour of the Japanese people, and has now left the shores of Japan to become a global sub-culture, embraced by all of those who adore everything ‘Kawaii’.

Kawaii is rainbows and sunshine, cute little kitties and cherry cup-cakes, its style is pink and frilly and feminine, it’s attitude pure and innocent. To foreigners it may be considered juvenile and childish, but to the Japanese and those that love Kawaii it is the embracing of a purity, that perhaps without Kawaii, they fear might be lost.

There are probably few people left on this planet who have not noticed the schoolgirl fashion styles associated with ‘Manga’ the Japanese cartoons, Kawaii is an extension of this, the fashion style with regards to Kawaii clothing is often also known as ‘Lolita’, or in its most extreme form ‘CosPlay’.

Kawaii clothing is lace and ruffles galore, and it all began in the 1970s with the emergence of a new style of writing developed amongst the youth. Girls would write in big, round characters and they added little pictures to their writing, such as hearts, stars, smiley faces, and other cute icons, this style later became associated with the characteristics of acting childish and infantile and continued to develop into a popular underground movement. Later companies such as ‘Sanrio’ embraced the movement and began to produce merchandise including the now hugely popular ‘Hello Kitty’.

From there Kawaii permeated every aspect of Japanese life, mutating from a youth movement into popular culture. There are many men in the West who might complain that their women have lost all trace of their feminity, choosing instead to wear clothing that mimics those items originally worn by men, and who can fight and drink with the best of us, the Japanese with Kawaii have made up for this in abundance.

Every fashion style needs its accessories, and of course those associated with Kawaii are as cute as can be, think necklaces and earing's adorned with unicorns and smiley bumblebees, pink bows and ice-cream cones, and you’re pretty much there.

Kawaii accessories are bright and colorful, often plastic and cheap, but made with huge imagination. In essence Kawaii fashion accessories and Kawaii in general can be summed up as:

'Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
These are a few of my favorite things.'

Are you Kawaii?