The look is weird, and very Tokyo. Looking sexy, too. And appearing as though you might have a pulse? Better to glow blue like porcelain. Or to break out the black lipstick.

Check out any place where young women hang out in Tokyo, and you are likely to find Lolitas. In fact, it’s hard to miss them.

“People notice us, we stand out,” said Sachi, the lead vocalist for Black Pansy, a two-woman band whose look, from poofy wigs to bright purple stockings, has made them the darlings of the Tokyo Lolita scene. “The pure, girl-like world inside of me, that is what Lolita is all about.”

Tokyo can compete with any city in the world in terms of how many upscale boutiques sell the creations of the stars of fashion, the Versaces, the Dolce and Gabbanas, the Chanels and Pradas. Japanese designers have made it in Paris, and, at home, Japanese are among the world’s biggest consumers of brand-name fashion.

But Lolita thumbs its nose at Japan’s fashion establishment.

The look is little girl, tea party cute, starting with black hair ribbons or tiny bonnets and moving to frilly dresses and thick platform boots or Mary Jane flats, often augmented with a lace umbrella to protect the as-milky-as-possible complexion on sunny days.

And it has swelled into a full-fledged subculture, one well enough established to have spawned several sub subcultures, each with its own very precise nomenclature, starting off with the classic Gothic Lolita— pale with dark lips in heavy makeup— and progressing through Elegant Lolita, Sweet Lolita— a poofy, doll-like look— Punk, Country and Black Lolita, wearing almost exclusively black from head to foot.

... contd.