Yesterday, a neat new fashion site launched: Tokyo Candoll. The Japanese project collaborates with your favorite Gothic Lolita Punk brands, and introduces popular Gal models. I was approached to be featured on the site as a “reader model” (I’m honored!). You can see me in the “J-style celeb” section here; my interview responses are below.

Name: La Carmina
Occupation / dream for the future: Harajuku fashion and J-pop culture author/blogger/designer
Hobby: Attending to the many needs of my Scottish Fold cat, Basil Farrow
Shopping area: I spend most of my wardrobe budget on secondhand Gothic Lolita Punk fashions from Closet Child.
Favorite brand: h.NAOTO, Black Peace Now, Victorian Maiden
Favorite food: Izakaya
Favorite color: Goth black, Mana-sama blue, blood red, empress purple
Policy of Oshare: If you look like an undead Marie Antoinette, you’re on the right path.
Favorite Japanese: My Tokyo spooks! My friends in Japan are crazy and inspiring.

Tokyo Candoll’s sister site, Music Japan Plus, recently highlighted several clothing boutiques in Marui One. The Shinjuku department store houses your favorite Gothic, Lolita, punk rock and street brands. (You can see photos of all the stores in my gargatuan Goth and Lolita shopping guide.)

Atelier Boz is one of my favorite elegant Gothic aristocrat brands, especially the items for men. “This particular shop has constantly strived toward recreating a ‘classic, traditional European’ style. They sell beautiful items that have elegant forms and dashing, ‘knightly’ qualities. For the spring season they are planning to provide a wider variety of skirts, pumps, blouses and vests in various sizes.” Click here for more images of Atelier Boz, Moi-meme-moitie, Kera Angel and other brands in Marui One.

“What would happen if Alice of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ finds herself in ‘Pirate-land’? That is the main concept for this shop selling wild, decorative and stylish clothing.” (You can also find Alice and the Pirates at Laforet; click to see my photos.)

h.NAOTO dominates the sixth floor of 0101, as you can see in this post. “In addition to brands providing punk, gothic and Lolita items, brands such as ‘HONEY’ that sell SEXY & CUTE clothing for women, and ‘Sixh.’ that designs VISUAL & MODE-kei items for both men and women are well worth a look.”

“When you were little, did you ever wish you could try out the very cute lace frill dresses with lots of ribbons worn by princesses in picture books? Here’s a brand that will help you fulfill those childhood dreams” — Angelic Pretty. I photographed the cute Marui boutique in this post.

Hyphen Magazine, a San Francisco-based publication about Asian-American culture, interviewed me for a piece about Japanese theme restaurants (above). If you’re intrigued, you can find out more about Akihabara maid cafes my book, Crazy Wacky Theme Restaurants: Tokyo.

Finally, some bits and pieces of J-pop fun…

† My friend Maria uploaded a great video of Kaya performing at Tokyo Decadance, wearing a white Lolita dress. Kawaii.
† I found some mind-blowing Japan hairstyle photos on Flickr. The neon colors and spiky swirly styling are insane. (Above are some winning hairstyles from Tokyo Riyo.)
† Hooray for Japanese host hair — these nightclub staff pics are hilarious! Which one is your dream-boi? Mine is the ALIEN.

Have you found my Gothic Lolita Punk store photos and shopping guide to be useful? I’ll be updating it soon!