Now before I continue, let me just say that this is a fashion critique, which does not necessarily translate into my feelings about the music. In case you can't tell.
Also a warning: This post contains a lot of words.
Let’s be honest – I like visual kei. I appreciate the diversity of both the sound and the style. I love the makeup and the flamboyant costumes. What I don’t like is when bands decide to wear ‘uniforms’.
I am talking about when the members of a band wear exactly the same thing. In such a case, you could take a photograph of the band, cut their heads out of the picture, and they would all look identical. Now, I understand that it’s supposed to represent some visual continuity between the bandmen, and that sometimes there is subtle variation between costumes; when the same colour schemes, a common theme, or similar materials have been used but each costume has been designed differently.
The rage-inducing aspect for me is when despite the use of different costume designs, it’s still extremely hard to tell the difference. If the costumes are distinguishable from one another it’s no big deal for me – e.g., D’s Ouka Saki look, or Malice Mizer’s Le Ciel.
When you all wear exactly the same thing for no formal reason, it doesn’t look visually consistent. It looks dumb.
There are a few bands that I listen to (and whose music I do like) who are repeat offenders, the worst of them being The GazettE.
I’ve noticed that they’re rather fond of their suits. That picture in the top right corner is from way back, showing that they’ve been committing this VK fashion faux pas forever! Suits are nice, but somewhat boring. It’s called visual kei for a reason. Though, on second thought, having a boring costume brings the audience’s focus onto your face and hair.
The white suits in the top left are okay. At first glance they look identical, but on closer inspection, Reita’s jacket is longer than everyone else’s, Kai’s cuts horizontally across the midriff, etc, etc. There are also minor differences in the detail on their pants. Big ups to the people who made the clothes for paying such attention to detail, but how many people would actually look so closely at this picture to appreciate it? Excluding myself, ofc. Nevertheless, I dislike how these suits appear the same at a glance. It wouldn’t attract any attention from a non-biased, non-Gaz-fangirl viewer.
Suits are one thing, but the costumes in the bottom three pictures make me cringe. The worst, in my opinion, would be their half-black-half-white costumes, of which I couldn’t find a good picture. They look childish and silly. The hoodies make them look like school kids.
The subject of hoodies brings me to the next band, Girugamesh.
It’s been a long time since I last saw these guys wear something unidentical. Being a band that doesn’t seem to place importance on their appearance, they don’t really try to make an impact with unique makeup/hair traits either (e.g., Reita’s noseband, Asagi’s one-eyedness, etc). So really unless you take the time to watch the band a lot, it’s hard to tell who’s who. You could go by height, but then there’d be two short ones (Ryo and Satoshi) and two tall ones (Nii and Shu).
Now, this is an honest problem I always encounter – it’s easy to tell Ryo from Satoshi. Ryo is cuter, like a little kid. But when it comes to telling Nii and Shu apart, especially when they’re in makeup, I can’t do it when I don’t concentrate. It probably isn’t that hard to distinguish between the two, but hey. VK bands purposefully make themselves look unique from their bandmates for dumb fangirls, in order to develop individual fanbases. It’s like how in Dir en grey’s early days, both Kaoru and Toshiya had blue hair, and fans kept getting them mixed up despite the fact that they look nothing like each other. Then Kaoru went purple/pink and all was well.
Now, onto a less offensive but still pretty bad band,
Alice nine. They seem to like using similar colours and fabrics and making subtle variations in their costumes. Perhaps the variations are too subtle for my untrained eyes.
When I see these pictures, I don’t see themed costumes with subtle variations. I see a big explosion of blue, red and white/grey/black/red. The last of which hurts my eyes the most. To be honest, I quite like the suits in the top picture. I amassed several pictures from this photoshoot, but it took me about a year to realise that there were, in fact, variations in each costume.
My initial thought of the second picture is that the redness of everything takes the attention away from the details in the outfits. That and the fact that they are all costumes based on pants and jackets predisposes them to dismissal by viewers, and there will be few who take the time to appreciate the intricacy.
In the bottom picture, the members are all wearing something different, but made with the same eyesore of a print. Again, they all have lapels and pants. They even blend in with the background. I think the picture is too busy, and for this reason I rarely look at pictures from this shoot.
And what of the bands who do it right? Of course, nobody gets it right all the time. It’s just that the aforementioned ones do it wrong in so many instances.
Examples of bands who have played well with themes, materials, and colour schemes (at one time or another) include:
D. Not including Kuon, and Kaze ga Mekuru Peeji. xD
I love their
Ouka Saki look. The theme of traditional kimono with a twinge of goth/punk looks really good, and each outfit is memorable.
Nocturnal’s batty theme was also handled well, even in spite of everything being black. I think it works when each of the members has their own typical style (like how Ruiza and Tsunehito are usually the ones in skirts, Hiroki likes his chest and legs to be bare, and Hidezou enjoys wearing suits).
On the subject of suits, that shot of them in the
Tafel Anatomie era (right hand side) is a good example of this. Asagi has his own personal flair with the leopard print tie. Tsunehito shows off his style with the cross & ribbon bow-tie and the skirt with a flash of thigh. Hiroki looks cool with his tie loosened slightly. Can’t say much about the other two though lol.
D=OUT. So far anyway.
Their
Flashback outfits are to my taste. There’s an ongoing theme, but it’s obvious that no two pieces are the same. Another look I haven’t included is
Koi no Vacance, where they all wear white suits with black shirts, but they all have unique, contrasting ties. Kouki looks spiffing in his white bowtie~
Sendai Kamotsu. OF COURSE.
Nightmare’s alter ego band is so easily recognizable by the colours red and gold, but there are no difficulties in telling each member apart based on their costumes. Especially Chiba, whose costume is quite often no costume. x_x
So there are my thoughts on identical costumes. There are a lot of other bands I could go on about e.g. Dir en grey. However that would take way too long… I think I’ve had enough ranting for one day.
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