“I suppose that when I say clothing – and flouncy, frilly, ruffly, lacy clothing at that – is the most precious thing in my life, most people of intellect would just laugh disparagingly and call me a silly girl. I might be scolded, but never praised: dedicating myself to love, scholarship, or work is valid, they’d say, but devoting my entire being to something so trifling as clothing is nothing more than frittering away my life. But why can’t I devote my life to clothing? What’s wrong with treasuring encounters with clothes more than encounters with people? People have different values. I don’t think the convictions and philosophies of people who become doctors to save the lives of poor people in developing countries are superior or inferior to those of someone like me, who was enchanted by the Lolita look and decided to live according to the Rococo aesthetic that is its source. And even if I was wrong about that, and my aspiration to live as a Lolita is terribly foolish, or indeed the worst thing anybody could do, I still would not renounce it. Even if everybody in the entire world agrees that something is a piece of junk, if to my eyes it appears more precious and necessary that diamonds or the giant panda, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to defend it to the death as the most important thing in the world.”

Photo from the Kamikaze Girls film starring Kyôko Fukada (as Momoko) and Anna Tsuchiya (as Ichigo).