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      TOMBOW UNIFORM MUSEUM

      Sport coats had been part of some school uniforms for decades, but it was in the mid-1980s that the blazer really took off. More than the “look,” the practicality of the blazer and skirt drove its appeal. Students typically only bought a couple of sets of uniforms for all of junior high or high school. So for the first couple of years these may have been too big, but when girls hit a growth spurt the outfit would look terrific. In the final years of school, however, the uniform would be bursting at the seams. A blazer layered with a white shirt and a sweater vest was much more forgiving to raging teen hormones.

      The preppy single-breasted jacket became very much in vogue—Tokyo schools leading the charge with navy and caramel colored versions. Large school crests sewn onto the blazers not only appealed to parents’ preppy sensibilities, but breathed an air of nostalgia as the style was reminiscent of the jackets-with-embroidered-crests worn by the athletes of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In the “bubble” economy of 1980s Japan, the uniform moved well beyond simply functioning as a uniform—it became brand-name fashion.

      Schools noticed a sudden spike in applicants when they changed their uniform designs. As a result, institutions across the country began adopting new styles. People like illustrator Nobuyuki Mori began to take a keen interest in the sudden variety of uniforms springing up at the time. While still in high school, Mori began sketching school uniforms in his neighborhood to quiz his buddies. When he left the ’burbs to study for university entrance exams in Tokyo, the endless uniform variations blew his mind. He noticed that no two uniforms were the same. They couldn’t be, or else they’d cause confusion. So Mori set out to catalogue all this in the ultimate compendium, his 1985 book, The Illustrated Schoolgirl Uniform Guidebook, which would go on to sell two hundred thousand copies. “I was inspired,” says Mori, “by all the different and beautiful uniforms in Tokyo.”

      NOBUYUKI MORI

      But anyone who tried to keep up to date with uniform trends had a huge job on their hands. By the mid-1990s, preppy was out, and slutty was in. Schoolgirl skirts got short and white socks got loose. Much like the sukeban a generation earlier, girls rebelled against strict school uniforms. They wore outrageous makeup, dyed their hair, got fake tans, and rolled up their skirt’s waistband to turn long dresses into D.I.Y. micro-minis. These dangerously short skirt–wearing, golden brown tanned schoolgirls were called kogal or just gyaru.

      When girls began showing skin at more conservative institutions, parents and teachers gasped, and strict schools started scrutinizing scanty hemlines with before-class spot checks. Some private academies even went so far to have teachers scattered off-campus to eyeball girls on the way to school. Japanese students all carry rule books that outline their school’s regulations, but the uniform fashion the girls were creating, says Mori, “exists in the space between those school rules and breaking them.” Not all establishments gave a hoot though, and in some cases, delinquent girls were given carte blanche to run amok. In other cases the crackdown on micro-minis only encouraged the trend, and some girls started leading a double life. During learning hours, they’d unroll their skirts to an acceptable length; after school, they’d hike their cookie-cutter uniforms up and pull on a pair of loose socks, the other essential ingredient of the kogal look. It was clear girls enjoyed wearing their uniforms out of school hours, but only on their own terms.

      NOBUYUKI MORI

      Off to one side of the Tombow Museum is a large meeting room where staff from academic institutions and retailers sit in red fabric chairs and plan new duds with Tombow. Headless dummies model Tombow-produced uniforms for the Japanese clothing brands Olive des Olive and Comme Ça Du Mode. The meeting room is a lab of sorts as well, to research the latest school trends. The company not only polls teachers and parents, but also investigates schoolgirl tastes by quizzing kids. “Students want something they can wear after school,” says Sano. This often means fashion that looks like a school uniform but that is, in fact, fake.

      CONOMI

      Diplomatically cute

      IN 2008, the Japanese Foreign Ministry selected three women to be Ambassadors of Cute (Kawaii Taishi), including seifuku-wearing actress Shizuka Fujioka, who was nineteen. The Ministry hoped to capitalize on the popularity of cute Japanese things abroad and Fujioka saw her selection as a huge honor. “I think they picked me because I look good in a uniform.”

      MOON THE CHILD

      Fujioka had already graduated from high school, where she was disappointed by her school’s homely uniform. She now owns five sets of store-bought seifuku for her role, preferring the blazer and plaid skirt look, because, she says, “Sailor suits are way hard to coordinate!” She borrows the rest of her wardrobe from online retailer CONOMi, where she moonlights as an uniform adviser. “If you think school uniforms are cute,” she says, “you shouldn’t hesitate to wear them—even if you’ve already graduated from school!”

      Her ambassadorial post ended in 2009, after a year of smiling and speaking at cultural events such as the Japan Expo 08 in Paris. According to Fujioka her role was to show the whole world “how cute Japanese school uniforms are.” Mission accomplished.

      For girls in their mid-teens the uniform symbolizes a brief period in their life when they are free, unbound by adult matters like career, marriage, and children. There’s schoolwork, sure, but as teenagers they are cushioned from the world around them. They’re not children, and they’re not quite adults—yet they have more freedom than both. Anything is possible. So many girls yearn to wear uniforms even when their schools don’t require them. And if some girls think their own school’s outfit is dorky, they change into clothes that, to the untrained eye, look exactly like school uniforms. Whether it’s during school hours or after class and weekends, the uniform is a blossoming beacon, bluntly signaling to society: I am a schoolgirl, young and free.

      CONOMI

      This demand has led some boutiques to hock cute, unofficial

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