Perfume to release a book about their iconic, but doo-doo outfits

With Miss Corona loving life and enjoying her Summer vacation, and already planning her stay for Autumn and Christmas, Perfume said 'Y'all can have a nice hardback book full of pictures of us in our nasty ass dresses'.

Perfume's costume book covers 15 years of their outfits from 2005 to 2020, so this won't include some of the monstrosities they wore during their Beehive days. The story will instead start from the days of "Linear Motor Girl". The book covers 250 of Perfume's outfits from music videos and performances, and also features interviews with Perfume themselves, their stylists and outfit designers.

Perfume's stage outfits are fucking hideous these days, and have been consistently doo-doo from 2011, when Perfume starting wearing Super Sentai-looking-ass outfits, and the whole a-chan: Empire line dress, Kashiyuka: Short skirts and Nocchi: Shorts really started to stick. But there's no denying that Perfume's style is memorable and a key component of the group. And it's the one thing about them aside from their ability to put on a good show which has remained wholly consistent.

Some of Perfume's outfits are such a fucking mess that I genuinely think their stylists do it on purpose. I'm still not over those Future Pop dresses. Disgusting. But I still remember them.

Now. Let's talk about this damn book cover.

Cosmic Explorer limited edition cover vibes, which is no coincidence, given that the book cover was creative directed by Yuni Yoshida, who was also responsible for the limited edition Cosmic Explorer album cover. This shit is mad risqué for Perfume. Although a-chan wanted no part of it. She told the style team 'Dress me how you would if I was performing on stage'. So she had a full skirt, a dress with shoulder straps, and chose not to do the whole covering-my-pussy pose that Kashiyuka and Nocchi are doing. It's a great looking cover. Creative. On theme. On brand.

Perfume's creative team make some questionable choices, but the consistency of their image is crazy and admirable. I can think of few acts who have managed to maintain image consistency the way Perfume have. They're like damn cartoon characters. The team rarely slips.

As hideous as some of Perfume's music video, album cover and stage outfits are (I'm assuming these are the looks the book will focus on), I'm interested in the inspiration behind some of the looks they've sported, how much input Perfume have, and how the design team navigate all of the considerations when creating outfits for them - because there are more moving parts when it comes to designing stage outfits for Perfume than for most. Making them easy to quick-change out of. Designing outfits that can be layered. Sometimes Perfume's outfits have to be designed to supplement a technical part of their performance, such as the projection mapping for "Spending All My Time". I don't think we'll get this level of detail, as Perfume like to keep lids on a lot of the how's. But if nothing else there will be lots of great photos of doo-doo dresses.

The Perfume costume book is released on October 23rd, 2020 and you can get'chu a copy at A!Smart.

🎛️ Perfume megamixes: LEVEL3 Megamix | Cosmic Explorer Megamix
📀 The albums, but different: Revised editions of Perfume's albums
💿 Album reviews: The Best "P Cubed" | Future Pop | Cosmic Explorer | LEVEL3 | JPN | Triangle | Game