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Koakuma Ageha

Past and present photos of Japanese fashion models make us wonder, where have all the gyaru gone?

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, it seemed that you couldn’t walk down a street in any major shopping district in Japan without spotting a group of gyaru chatting enthusiastically about…something. But in recent years, the number of tanned young women with the very colorful (some might say “loud”) gyrau fashion style seems to have dropped almost to zero.

With the shutting down last year of fashion magazines Koakuma Ageha, which will be restarting publication in April, and egg, it seems that gyaru might soon be owacon (“owatta contentsu” or something that doesn’t sell anymore). While we wouldn’t be too quick to sign any death certificates, these before-and-after photos of one-time gyaru models are a sure sign of how things have changed.

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Good times for gyaru – Fashion “bible” Koakuma Ageha is back!

There are so many fashion trends in Japan that it’s hard to keep up with them all. In the past you could walk into virtually any bookstore and see a ton of fashion magazines staring back at you, begging to teach you how to dress and why your eyeshadow is all wrong for your skin tone. But print media, especially magazines, has been struggling recently and many of these fashion guides have shut up shop over the past year, never again to inform the public of the latest styles or urge us all to buy crimson deck shoes.

But fear not! Much-loved fashion mag Koakuma Ageha is returning to print and it’s apparently better than ever. From now on, it will be easier than ever to find out what set of nails are “in” and which fake eyelashes are best! So when is the first new issue out?

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