Evenly spaced crash leggings spotted in streets fashion magazine Fruits
Trendy Japanese girls are ripping it up right now and flashing quite a bit of flesh while they’re at it as they take a pair of scissors to classic black pantyhose or leggings. While some girls interpret this as a punk fashion by randomly slashing Lycra, creating gaping holes and ladders aplenty, other postmodernists are more careful about how their crash tights or crash leggings appear, taking time to ensure that slits are evenly spaced exposing equal parts of tempting flesh all the way up the leg.
The trend could be symptom of Japan’s Lady Gaga mania. Gaga turned up at Narita airport last summer in a pair of artfully slashed leggings paired with a black jacket. Apparently the longish jacket was necessary to conceal the fact that a little too much flesh was peeping through around her panty line.
Crash (クラッシュ) is a word initially used to describe the process of customizing jeans to make them look distressed. As with jeans, you can buy pre-ripped leggings if you’re not confident enough with a pair of scissors. But as one girl on Yahoo Japan comments, the pre-ripped numbers sometimes look too neat. She asked users for advice on how to achieve the random look at home.
While the look is catching on with girly women, currently it’s being sported mainly by cutting-edge fashionista chicks like the one pictured. No matter what their style, one thing is for sure, unlike Lady Gaga’s get up, they’ll be no slices of rump on display: The trick for Japanese girls is to pair their messed up leg wear with a suitably concealing mini skirt or dress.