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Japanese schoolgirls’ hemlines are still up, but socklines are way down

Cara Clegg Jan 15, 2016
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Breaking fashion news: Japanese high school girls’ sock-lines are sinking!

Japanese schoolgirls, known in their homeland as joshi kosei, or just JK, are somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. As well as wandering the streets in their uniforms even on the weekend, their likeness can even be found in anime, adverts, pop groups. While there is a darker side to Japan’s infatuation with schoolgirls, the depictions represent the innocence of youth and a romanticized view of the high school experience, a time when all girls had to worry about was grades, boys and, of course, fashion.

The knee-sock has long been a staple of fashion-forward Japanese schoolgirl fashion, creating an image recognizable around the world and synonymous with Cool Japan. JK turned an item of clothing that most people pay little attention to into an integral part of an outfit and led to such bemusing inventions as “sock touch” sock glue. Whether slouchy white socks for the more rebellious teen or standard navy knee socks, high socks were where it was at.

Rakuten

However, the times they are a-changing and it’s long been observed that hemlines go up and down with each respective era. But in 2016 it’s not the skirt-lengths that are budging; those are as short as ever. This year, it’s time for the socks to get shorter—a change that has got people buzzing and tweeting in their droves, posting their observations of and reactions to south-headed socklines across the country.

▼ The slouchy sock is out.

Ameblo

Naturally it makes some women feel old, lamenting that girls these days probably don’t even know what “sock touch” is. Fashion has a habit of moving on and leaving us behind as we grow older, and the sacrifices teen girls make in the name of looking good become more and more difficult to fathom. A common theme among the comments on this topic is a genuine concern for the girls whose legs must surely be freezing during these cold winter months. Apparently miniskirts are one thing, but short socks are a whole other. Many people took to their keyboards to express a mix of concern and disapproval about the fashion change, with comments along the lines of “you don’t look cute, just cold”, and seemed to be struck with the parental urge to buy a pair of tights for the young girls.

▼ RIP Sock Touch sock glue…

Digital Farm Blog

Perhaps these schoolgirls have some kind of super resistance to the cold? From my own, admittedly unscientific, observations it certainly appears that way as I shiver beneath layers of wool while these waif-like teens appear completely unfazed by the biting winter wind. I’ve even spotted them eating ice cream!

When theorizing over the reasons behind this trend it’s been suggested that perhaps young girls have realized that there’s a limit to how short you can make a skirt, and have resorted to lowering their socks in order to show even more leg. If this is the case then is it safe to predict that the next trend will be trainer socks, or even going completely sockless? Or perhaps things will take another unexpected turn and we’ll be seeing a thing for thigh-highs in the near future?

▼ The combination of short skirt + short socks = long looking legs.

Twitter

What all this speculation comes down to is that, unless you actually are one at this current point in time, we just don’t get teenage girls. Japanese schoolgirls will no doubt continue to set their own trends, and the adult population will continue to look on and reminisce about how things made so much more sense back in their day.

Source: Naver Matome
Header Image: Blogspot