Courtney Love’s All Night Dolly-Kei Party in Tokyo

Courtney Love was in Tokyo earlier this week as her band Hole played the Summer Sonic music festival. But when Courtney is in Japan, she doesn’t just play music – she also jumps right into the local fashion scene. Courtney has a long relationship with the Japanese brand Hysteric Glamour. This time, though, her Japanese fashion adventures also included an all night party with Tokyo’s most well-known Dolly-Kei girls. Sound intriguing? Read on!

For those of you that have been following TokyoFashion.com for a while, you know that many of the staff here really like Hole vocalist – and all-around wild child – Courtney Love. Not only will she be the female poster child for the 90s fashion revival when it finally comes, but she was making big trouble on AOL practically before the founders of Twitter (where many celebrities first started showing their faces online) were out of junior high. Ahead of her time in technology, a leader of 90s fashion trends (baby doll dresses, anyone?), and she released “Live Through This” – what’s not too love? Well, there is all the drama, but that just makes us love her more.

So, with our appreciation of Courtney out in the open, we were really happy when she showed TokyoFashion.com a little love of her own earlier this year by posting some Twitter updates saying that she liked the site, and that she was really feeling the Dolly-kei fashion that we had been posting. Besides the Dolly-kei street snaps, we later published our profile on Grimoire Shibuya, and then more recently our feature on the Grimoire Anniversary Party. So, when Courtney came to Tokyo, what shop staff do you think she decided to hang with? That’s right – Grimoire!

Grimoire’s manager – the always fashionable Hitomi – posted an amazing update on the official Grimoire blog this week explaining what happened – and how happy they were about it. Here are some excerpts from the blog, translated from Japanese into English by us:

We had an amazing guest come here to Grimoire last night. At around 7pm we got a call from the Park Hyatt hotel in Shinjuku! And who should appear at the store at 8pm but rock star Courtney Love after her concert had just ended at the Summer Sonic music festival.

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Courtney felt the images from Grimoire were similar to her own view of the world, and she’d been visiting the Grimoire blog, site and overseas web site.

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She has apparently wanted to visit the store and meet all of us for a long time. I was so very happy to hear that. It made me feel again just how important it is to dive into something you love and not just do what others tell you.

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Then Courtney invited the whole Grimoire staff into a suite room at the Shinjuku Park Hyatt.

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At the hotel we listened to her talk about many things including clothing and music…she seemed to take an interest in Japanese girl’s makeup, so we taught her how to do that… lol

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She gave us a lot of gifts, like a Victorian outfit she wore during her concert, and other little accessories. And we talked and talked, and talked, and talked…we had a such a good time. It was 6am when I finally checked the time.

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That was a very happy night for us, Courtney Love, thank you thank you thank you! The picture (on the Grimoire blog) is of us with Courtney after we did her up in Japanese gal makeup.

You can read the full post on the Grimoire blog. It is mostly in Japanese, so you may need to use an online translator. There are also pictures of Courtney and the Grimoire staff together at the Park Hyatt posted on the blog – check out the pictures and be amazed!

Besides her all-night Dolly-kei party, Courtney also visited with the popular Japanese fashion brand Hysteric Glamour. Hysteric has offered a Courtney Love collection (and a Nirvana collection) for several years, so that’s no surprise. She posted photos of herself at the “secret” Hysteric store in Tokyo, along with other Courtney-in-Japan fashion pictures on her personal blog What Courtney Wore Today.

Seeing Courtney showing her love for the Japanese fashion scene, both on the indie (Grimoire) and the major (Hysteric Glamour) levels, makes us very happy.

Credits: The photo used in this article was taken by the Flickr user Yangon at Hole’s performance in Tokyo. (We were at the show too, but we like this photo better than ours!) The quotes from the Grimoire blog are all courtesy of Grimoire.