An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla: On "Aymmy in the batty girls" & the retro adventures of Ayumi Seto

Aymmy in the batty girls is a new lifestyle and apparel line slated for Spring 2014 featuring ASOBI SYSTEM model Ayumi Seto as the brand’s director and image character Aymmy.

According to the official website “It is a brand that projects a lifestyle fashion of ‘Aymmy’ a 17 year old girl from California”…who apparently lives the American Dream and is “working in a diner.”

Based on the image illustration, Aymmy looks like a long lost background character from an Archie comic book, and appears to have been raised in some kind of hermetically shielded fallout shelter where the 21st century never happened.

Aymmy’s fictitious bio (which overlaps with Ayumi Seto’s own catalog of interests) claims her favorite foods are hamburgers and Cherry Cokes. Her favorite movies are Ghostbusters, E.T., and Return of the Living Dead. Her favorite groups are the Ramones, the Damned, the Sex Pistols, and the Dead Boys.

Built on these foundations, the brand is promising clothing and goods in the following genres: Kidz, SK8 (skate), School, and Rock. Coordinates like this have long been the stuff of countless fashion spreads in Harajuku-kei magazines like KERA and Zipper, where the tomboyish 20-year old Seto has been regularly featured. Even more, the caps and sports jerseys “kids” look that batty girls will be rolling out has been a cornerstone for Harajuku and Shibuya style since the "cutie" 1990s.

I’m not sure exactly how long the batty girls brand has been in the planning stages, but the official promo pictures look like they were taken when Seto (along with ASOBI SYSTEM agency pal Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) passed through California for the J-pop Summit in July 2013. Consider now what the vanguard of “Cool Japan” found in the wild and opted to bring back with them: the ruins and ghosts of American pop culture.

The lookbook for ‘Aymmy in the batty girls’ shows Seto stalking the streets of LA with soda pop in hand, paying homage to Dr. Pepper in a Melrose antique store, posing in front of a juke box, and contemplating an “old fashioned” milk shake. Some of the photos and clothes do make overtures to punk and surfer looks, but it’s clear that the real target of this sentimental journey is a nostalgic nonspecific past: the post-Elvis fifties or the pre-Beatles sixties. Pure American Graffiti territory.

Of course…it’s nothing new. Retro junk culture has long since become inseparable from girl’s fashion in Japan. For decades now, magazines from egg to ageha and all points in-between have continually shown us models in both cheap and expensive garb gorging themselves on greasy foods surrounded by trash pop iconography: Hot dogs, super markets, soda pop, ‘50s diners, superheroes; all of it echoes and symbols of the hyper consumerism that America hotwired into the DNA of post-war Japan.

But the models in the spreads are usually just the stand-ins for the real work of stylists and designers: human mannequins. However, Ayumi Seto appears to be the real deal. Way before Aymmy in the batty girls was announced late in September, Seto’s Instagram had dedicated itself to cataloging pop art, old movies, and comic book covers. Even now, copious plates of hamburgers tend to outnumber the selfies.

Indeed, Seto is practically a character from Phil Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle”, an emissary from an alternate Japan that won the war and now collects symbols of vanishing Americana. Already invisible in the batty girls fantasy is any evidence at all of the digital world we now inhabit. While writing this post, I took a break for walked down a city block for a coffee. Literally everyone was looking at their phone or interfacing with some kind of device, be it phone or MP3 player. But by gosh, here is Seto's alluring old fashioned world of colorful physical objects and, you have to admit, it looks like fun. And I don't care what you're selling. Fun is the ultimate commodity.

"Ayumi Kidz" book on sale 10/7

You gots ta wonder: Will there ever be a “new” nostalgia? Will strip malls and Starbucks ever inspire Japanese girls the way junk food and antique shops do? Will the Westward-gazing batty girls find an audience overseas, let alone in their own “Harajuku kawaii!!” backyard? Will girls who look like Aymmy ever work at diners again? Did they ever in the first place? Can a 20 year old Japanese girl get away with pretending to be a teenager from California, and is that any crazier than 30-somethings playing teenagers in "Grease"?

I can't say for sure, except that stranger things have happened and hamburgers never seem to go out of style...

The Cherry Bomb burger, curated by Ayumi Seto, on sale at Village Vanguard. Probably fucking delicious...