
Host / Kyabakura (Maho Fujimoto)
Types of Clothing / Attire
INTRODUCTION
What people wear can be one of the key signs that demonstrate their characteristics, appeals, and socioeconomic status. Just at the first sight of looking at different signboards, people can immediately notice the different clothing and attire worn by hosts and kyaba-jyo. This page will introduce different types of clothing that was observed and analyze how this clothing contributes to their characteristics and impression on viewers. The page will also show the difference between the hosts’ and kyaba-jyo’s attire as well as how these two signboards are unique and distinctive from other signboards.
Formal
Many hosts and kyaba-jyo are in formal attire; hosts are wearing suits and kyaba-jyo wearing extravagant dresses.
Suits (Hosts)
Wearing a suit can show respect, seriousness, and masculinity. As a worker of the host clubs who are expected to entertain customers through communication, the formal attire of their suits shows professionalism. However, within the suit attire, different types and colors of suits are worn. In addition to the normal white shirt and black suit attire, there are hosts who wear bow ties (Image 1) which increases the cuteness and childishness. Some wear all black (Image 2) which the color illustrates more power and confidence. In contrast, there are hosts that wear all-white suits (Image 3) that present themselves as pure and peaceful. Not only the color but we can see differences in the fabric of the suit. One of the hosts wears a pink velvet fabric suit (Image 4) which illustrates not only power but wealth. These choices of suit types create and display their type characteristics as a host.
Dress (Kyaba-jyo)
Dress in fact is the only attire worn by kyaba-jyo. Moreover, all dresses worn by kyaba-jyo are extravagant that present their gorgeousness and wealth as high socioeconomic status. The dresses are all tight, exposing their whole body line, and also include a high exposure of skin in areas such as arms, shoulder, cleavage, back, and legs. This illustrates one of the theories “Body Display” presented by Goffman regarding the common gender representation of women in advertisements.
Body Display: the female models show high degree of nudity which is another important way of stereotyping. Body-revealing clothes include mini-skirts, tight skirts or evening gowns which expose cleavage, "short"-shorts, "see-through" clothes, halter dress, or bathing suits. (Jha, Raj & Gamgwar, 2017, page 3).
The high degree of exposure to skin illustrates femininity in a sexual way. Most specifically, all kyaba-jyo wears a dress that emphasizes their cleavage, increasing the sexiness of their appearance. This could indicate that their body is also essential to appeal to their customers as well as their confidence in their body shape. Furthermore, the dresses are either white or black. While most wear white dresses that express their innocence and purity, black illustrates more power and independence.

Image 2: Hosts with an all-black suit

Image 3: Hosts with an all-white suit

Image 1: Host with a bow tie

Image 4: Host with pink velvet fabric suit

Kyaba-jyo with black dresses

Kyaba-jyo with white dresses
In comparison to hosts’ formal attire, kyabakura lacks a variety of dresses and colors which indicates that the types and characteristics are not valued but more focused on their appearance.
Casual Outfit
Some hosts on signboards are wearing casual clothes. Unlike formal clothes, casual clothes increase the comfortability and create an accessible and relaxed mood. From observation, it is divided into two types of casual outfits; T-shirts and Hoddie outfits.
T-shirt
Many hosts who wear casual outfits are in T-shirts that are plain and simple. T-shirt which is worn regularly by anyone increases viewers’ comfortability and accessibility to the host. Their accessible friendly vibe becomes one of their key characteristics to attract customers that desires to talk comfortably. The simple attire also contributes to attracting attention to the face of the hosts.
Hoodie
Another casual outfit observed is hoodies. Similar to T-shirts, because hoodies are worn regularly, and more in comfortable situations, it leaves comfortability and accessibility to the viewers. However, the hoodie which can be a street fashion adds more masculinity and roughness over friendliness. These types of hosts may be effective on customers that prefer a little aggressive and cool vibes.



Patterned shirts
Pattern shirts can be interpreted as smart casual, in between formal and casual. With different designs on the shirt, it adds their characteristics to the appearance. Deepening the design they choose, can affect the viewers’ impression. A shirt of black and white patterns (Image 1) illustrates a more formal and cool vibe than a patterned shirt of dolphins, palm trees, flowers, and music notes (Image 2) shows a playfulness and less seriousness. Thus, patterns shirts are in between formal and casual but depending on the choice of design, the impression on viewers varies.

Image 1: Black and white patterned shirt

Image 2: Patterned shirt of dolphins, palm trees, flowers, and music notes
Accessories
Most hosts and kyaba-jyo wear accessories. While necklaces, piercings, and rings are worn by both, necklaces are the most seen accessory in both hosts and kyaba-jyo. Accessories demonstrate wealth. While kyaba-jyo presents their elegance through wearing small necklaces and piercings that are inconspicuous, hosts wear eye-catching accessories that are larger in size. Hence, hosts emphasize their wealth and social status through accessories and kyaba-jyo emphasizes femininity and elegance.
Summary




As covered in this page, even within the formal informal and its accessories, the design, and type of the clothing carries different characteristics and impression on the viewers. Furthermore, it revealed that although kyaba-jyo has only one or two patterns in their attire, hosts have a wide variety in their clothing. This demonstrates how kyaba-jyo emphasizes more on the concept of beauty while hosts offer customers a variety of types and characteristics. At the same time, this means that what customers of kyabakura and host clubs look for is different. Customers of kyabakura prioritize its appearance, however, customers of host clubs look for their preferred type of characteristics in hosts such as friendly, inaccessible, or hosts with cool and rough vibes.
Also, extravagant dresses with a high degree of nudity are rare on other signboards which target the public because it may be considered inappropriate. Moreover, clothing as one of the tools to present characteristics of each individual on signboards is unique. This can only be done by host clubs and kyabakura signboards because workers are the product of their stores.