森ガールってどこの森に消えていった？ Effects of deforestation; Where have all the Forest Girls gone?

If a forest girl is taken out of the forest, is she still a forest girl? Can one hand clap? Where DO all of those lost socks from the laundry go???

It’s these prodding questions that keep me up late at night.

And speaking of forest girl…it seems she’s now living in something that looks a helluva lot like a cement jungle, and not the actual jungles like before…

森ガールは、森を抜けても依然として森ガールと呼べるのかな？片手で拍手は出来るのかな？洗濯機の中の靴下はどこへ消えるのかな？！

こんな疑問が頭をぐるぐる回って夜も眠れないわけ。

森ガールの話に戻るけど、なんだか最近彼女達は森というジャングルを抜け出して街というセメントのジャングルを駆け回ってるらしい・・・

“Forest girl” (Mori girl..and her partner, the Herbivore Boy, I suppose) was one of the biggest fashion movements in Japan since goth-loli, appearing in the mid -2000’s. The idea was to look like a fairy from a Bothers Grimm tale and they even had a lot of arbitrary rules to follow at one point. They were kinda hipsters before hipsters were cool. It didn’t really come up in my personal discourse much, except when Tokyo Fashion Week rolled around and one of the catalyst brands for the Forest Girl movement, FurFur, would hold a show.  It had all of the elements; layers, unbleached cotton, doilies, lace, baby’s breath and tulle. It led the group from being a little bit gothic one season to cutesy and kawaii the next, but it still remained very true to what one might imagine a Mori Girl to wear or consider her ideal.

So fast forward to today when I opened up the newest catalogue from FurFur on a whim. I couldn’t find the forest anywhere. This girl was wandering the streets of Tokyo, standing in puddles, looking totally disinterested in my face agape with surprise. Whoah! When did the Forest Girl totally move into the city? Glamping isn’t a thing anymore? And neither are tons of layers or even being Japanese either (one of the characteristics of the brand was having casts made up almost entirely of local girls). This girl is a bit more boho-street LA blogger….well, not exactly LA… maybe more like Palm Springs.

Ok, but seriously… is mori girl totally finished? It wasn’t tied to any decade so I thought it might have some longevity… even gothic and lolita still have pockets of activity. Has it changed names? Is it just “ao-moji” now? Or iyashi-kei? There’s too many questions! What’s it called…you tell me!  Or I’m gonna have to go look in the parks for ’em myself.

In the meantime, see the evolution of FurFur at a glance: