Gutter Fabulous

Take a walk down Takashita-dori, past the creperies, the plastic teenage accessory stores, the African dudes peddling hip hop clothing, the dazed tourists trying to cope with it all. Cross Meiji-dori in a sea of humanity, take a slight left and walk down Harajuku Street. On your left, just before the ampm, you will find a dark and not particularly inviting flight of stairs leading down into a basement. This is Dog.

The layout is equal parts seedy nightclub and secret lair; decidedly unprofessional spray paint on the walls, white chain link everywhere, poster art of 80's ladies, and a stack of televisions playing static and meaningless bursts of color. In one corner, a potential outfit hangs from the ceiling: a white bustier paired with a tacky grandma bingo jacket and a skirt embellished with wefts of long black hair. Eerie, subversive and surprisingly funny; the ghost of Oiwa goes clubbing with the Golden Girls.

The clothes are almost all second-hand, most of them from the 80s, some of them altered, and a few of them appearing to have come from another planet. To shop here is to pause and ask yourself when and where was it socially acceptable to wear a dowdy gem sweater with tassels on the nipples? Then, once your eyes adjust to the dark and you start trying things on the corner cage that serves as a dressing room, you begin to wonder who, given the opportunity, wouldn't wear a rain forest-print jumpsuit, and what occasion wouldn't be appropriate for a pair of high-waisted, fringe-trimmed shorts and a matching cropped, backless jacket. You will find no answers here, only shelves of vintage Versace accessories, displayed alongside fetal pigs and dried cockroaches encrusted with rhinestones.