Trendwatch: Crossdressing Cosplay

Crossdressing — it’s big in Japan. We’re not kidding. Japan, which traditionally embraced cross-dressing is getting back to its roots, with more and more heterosexual men beginning to enjoy dressing as a woman from a fashion viewpoint.

Spearheading this new trend are maid cafes, little eateries where customers are served by men in drag. It started innocently enough: two and a half years ago, the owner of what is now one of the most popular maid cafes used a man as a maid after a female employee quit on him at the last moment. A male employee dressed up as a woman to serve customers, delighting the customers and bringing drag to the service industry.

The owner launched Hibari-tei in January 2008. Today, some 60 percent of its customers are male. And this isn’t the only one. More such cafes are popping up and many books about how to dress as a woman have started to hit bookshelves. The Tokyo-based lingerie maker Wish has been selling bras for men since November of last year and says that it has sold more than 10,000 of these in the first year.

Men are beginning to become a common occurrence in Tokyo’s Harajuku and Aoyama districts.

Information from The Japan Times Online, via Mistress Cyan.