New-old ‘Forest Girls’ fashion of Japan
Meet the Mori Girls, A New Japanese Subculture
By Rebecca Milner – Trend Researcher, Tokyo — fashionsnoops.com JUNE 17, 2009… Meet the Mori Girls, a new band of women with a penchant for layers of delicate vintage and DIY fashion. In addition to knitting, journaling, and haunting second hand bookstores, these urban dreamers can be found with their heads in the clouds—or literally in the forest. “Mori” means “forest” in Japanese.
….Just shy of three years later, the Mori Girls community is now over 30,000 strong. If the GothLolis have Harajuku, and the aforementioned Yamamba had Shibuya, then these figurative forest dwellers are colonizing an area of cyberspace with profile pages and blogs devoted to their yarui (loose and relaxed) lifestyle….more…
Although the ‘Forest Girls’ fashion has been gathering momentum for more than three years in Japan, the past couple of weeks the search term “Mori Girl” 
has massive numbers of hits as Google’s number one, “suddenly rising word,” despite an argument (machine translation) about the contradiction of defining “natural clothes and life.” It is also troublesome that now in Japan’s hellish summer this fashion trend is based on massively layered wools and cottons in a totally covered, burka-like, loose silhouette is going to be popular (machine translation of Nikkeibp.co.jp).
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July 7th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I don’t get the concept here very well, so I believe purplepeople may disagree with it.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Sir Darwin called, he wants you to remove what you say against wearing hot wool and cotton clothes in summer, in a country with a tropical weather.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Too many layers? I forgot they are traditional in Japan.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
the cloths that the girl is wearing in the last pic looks like the one my mom used during the hippie times haha
July 8th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Much of the popularity of this Mori Girl look is that it covers up a mediocre or dumpy figure…which was the same reason for the popularity the “Earth Mother” look of the hippies.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
what’s the deal with the shoes? i know japanese girls are not the tallest girl in the planet, but those shoes are frankly ridiculous :P
July 8th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
July 12th, 2009 at 10:27 am
The hobbit look has been around for years in Japan: the scarves, the little knit hats, the sandals/fairy boots. Not too many leather rucksacks, though (too expensive). The look certainly is in keeping with the perception the Japanese have of themselves as innocent forest creatures, snatched from the womb of primeval innocence by Capt. Perry and the black ships and later cruelly bombed by heartless, butter-smelling Westerners.
Bollocks, but there you have it.
But, as Monsieur Coligny noted, layered woolen attire is particularly inappropriate for a fetid, tropical place like Kanto. But to dress more suitably would be to admit they were…Asians. Not good.