Some find her too thin. Others think she’s a style icon. Kimiperi’s Instagram is a hot sauna where guys with too much free time and girls with too much … comment on her outfits. Kimiperi is into fashion and self-love, and I think about half of her ~318,000 followers (as of June 2024) are single guys who want to have a pretty girlfriend like her. Born in Magdeburg, she moved from Leipzig to the UK after dropping out of college. Her Instafeed is exciting because Kimiperi is gifted with a fashionable ingenuity that has been changin’ the game for years. She eGirled between goth and cosplay, between an art nouveau figure and metropolitan amazon, with Hello Kitty shirts and art deco accessories. Sometimes a witch’s dress, sometimes a catsuit, sometimes light and airy, sometimes with heavy boots on her feet.
I understand the appeal of girls in tights and eclecticism: in eclecticism, anything goes, and every combination shuffles the status quo yet again. Like the samurai sword from Grime’s last photo shoot, which suggests to us that Gintama is actually cooler than Hollywood, and that an outfit doesn’t have to be two-tone or duo-cultural to be convincing. The artists and designers who emulate in broader cultural spaces in particular know that ideas are not stored in boxes waiting to be snapped up, nor do they run on racetracks called “60s retro” or “Y2K” to where all trends go, namely in endless loops a la for-loops of self-discovery, but float freely in the closet of their possibilities and start with a look a la “What’s lying around here? “, followed by the call-to-action “How can I combine this?”, which is exciting, while the appeal of skinny chicks in funky tights is self-explanatory.
Here are a few highlights:
A witch’s hat with the phases of the moon in the inside of the brim, a skimpy top and dayum legs, in the background a happy teddy bear who seems to have discovered his eye on a detail of Kimiperi’s getup: what it is and why it’s important, probably only Kimiperi herself knows. (“Kimi has X cuddly toys”, explain further here).
A cosplay by Lynette from Genshin Impact. Kimi was a cosplayer at the MCM London Expo 2023, and probably caused quite a bit of paralysis among the visitors. The cat ears complement the solid look, and the combination of the short dress and leather gloves adds a touch of steampunk to the overall look. I realize that I’m not at all familiar with Genshin Impact, but when Kimiperi feels the outfit, I feel it too. Where did she get the outfit? She got it from Magicwardropes.
Highlight number 3 is the big city witch: two extremes flew into each other here and complemented each other perfectly. It seems as if she has eaten all the children from the village and is expanding to New York in search of a record deal. In addition, the cute mega-tatters (from ???), the bling on the chest and the self-deprecating bow on the phone case transform the wearer into a damned woman who takes it with humor.
