Hard Decora Is the Chicago-based Creative Promoting an Aggressively Cute Lifestyle Through Fashion and Art

Welcome to #FollowFriday, a Teen Vogue column where we speak with the founders of some of Instagram's coolest style accounts. This week, we chat with the founder of Hard Decora.

I was browsing Instagram when I came across the feed of Kamilah Jones, aka Hard Decora. With a feed full of brightly colored outfits and a bio that described her style as “aggressively cute,” I decided I needed to reach out to her immediately and hear more. The 27-year-old, who has modeled for Japanese brands such as ACDC Rag Harajuku, Listen Flavor, Hypercore, and Kingly Mask, takes her inspiration from an alternative Japanese fashion style called decora, a type of Harajuku style that first surfaced in the 1990s.

For Jones, the aesthetic means wearing lots of colors and layers, prints, hair accessories, and jewelry all at once. Picture colorful hair bows, lots of neon layering pieces, cotton-candy-toned sweats, and more. But this inspiration doesn’t just translate to her personal style: Jones has taken her passion for the kitschy subculture several steps further, launching her own clothing line and comic books in the same style. “My mission is to give people a radical confidence in their unique fashion and lifestyle aesthetic,” says the Chicago-based influencer.

Teen Vogue sat down with Jones to chat about what it means to be aggressively cute and her earliest style memories.

Teen Vogue: When did you launch your account?

Kamilah Jones: In the fated year of 2015! I had a friend that kept bugging me about making one because she felt that as an artist, I should make an account. That year I took the plunge even though I didn't quite understand the appeal at first.

TV: How would you explain Hard Decora to someone who knows nothing about it? What's your mission with this account/project?

KJ: Hard Decora is a brand that spreads the idea of being aggressively cute through comics, apparel, and lifestyle. I'm very much inspired by an alternative fashion style in Japan called decora where you wear a heavy amount of accessories, clashing patterns, and layers. I also like not being underestimated because of my cuteness, thus "hardcore" got incorporated into the name. I like to merge those elements with American street fashion. My mission is to give people a radical confidence in their unique fashion and lifestyle aesthetic.

I first got interested in decora after running across it on Tumblr and watching a video featuring fashion icon Haruka Kurebayashi talk about her style. I started to collect things on my own for the most part but quickly found out there was a vibrant alternative fashion community in America. Brands like Angelic Pretty, galaxxxy, and 6% Doki Doki have fashion shows and art events in the West where they spread the message of having fun with fashion. There are so many different style genres stemming from Harajuku and Shibuya, and each fashion has its own culture. These distinct patterns are also present in the American representation of those styles. Decora kids, for example, are what I call the scavengers of the style landscape. We love to thrift together and make accessories out of anything colorful we can find, like toys, Band-Aids, and even candy wrappers. Whereas other styles participate in tea parties or karaoke as a big part of their hang-out culture.

TV: What was it about J-fashion that resonated with you? How have you made it your own?

KJ: What resonated with me about J-fashion is the fact that none of the styles were made out of trying to attract a romantic partner or moving away from things you like just because you're older. It seemed like for women's mainstream fashion, you moved from colorful, creative girl's clothes to neutral women's clothing too starkly for my taste. The mainstream fashion of the day felt like a costume, and with me being a very small and baby-faced person, it looked like a costume too. As someone who is black participating in J-fashion, I seem even more out of the norm to the outside world, but there are plenty of us out there dressing alternatively. I pull a lot of inspiration from black style in the ’90s and pop stars like TLC, Missy, Aaliyah, and Lil Kim too. All the things considered ghetto from my childhood come in pretty handy today, like colorful hair and long nails with too many adornments.

TV: How do you attempt to capture "aggressive cuteness" and why? What does that phrase mean to you?

KJ: Lifestyle-wise, being aggressively cute means you would never try to hide what you love, and if anyone has anything to say about it they can suck it! I love wearing alternative fashion so much that I work very hard to create a life where I can do so as much as possible. I know many others that follow my profile want that too but are too afraid of being judged, so they relegate themselves to having one cute button or a single streak of purple hair when they'd rather have a head of pastel curls and a purple bedroom.

I think seeing someone like me owning a business, working full-time as a graphic designer, and married, they can feel like adulthood and whimsy can reside together. For the clothes I design, I often have curse words, sexual themes, and weapons mixed with the pastel or rainbow color schemes. I think goths and punks have a stylish and tough air to them, but my fellow pink punks can be tough too. My brand is for those that are sweet but are not naive or shy about what they want.

TV:_ What are your earliest style memories, and how did they inform your work now?

KJ: My parents very much valued being fashionable because they were artists themselves in the music industry. My earliest style memories came from my mom, who has always supported me developing my own taste. I remember my mom showing me stuff from the Avril Lavigne skater girl collection and me giving her an excited yes in the store. I would tell her what I wanted to dress like, and she would help me find items that fit that look. She always said to only buy clothes that you love so every outfit is your favorite. This made shopping and curating my style a fun journey rather than an intimidating task, like it can be for someone new to dressing out of the norm.

I wasn't always supported, though. My stepmother, for example, was the total opposite and thought I should be cautious of wearing weird things. She was afraid I'd be bullied or that it meant I'd go down a "dark path." I think a lot of my work is working through that dichotomy. Embracing my mother's energy and rejecting those that challenged my dreams, telling me I could be creative but only in a certain way.

TV: How have people responded to your account? What do you hope they take away from interacting with it?

KJ: The response has been amazingly positive so far and I’ve made so many new friendships and connections from running it. I especially love when other dark-skinned women see my pictures and realize that they can be colorful too. Or when customers share how confident they feel in their Hard Decora clothes. I hope that people feel inspired by my account but even more so, empowered! Empowered to be cute in any way they see fit.

TV: What other things should we know about you and your work?

KJ: I cohost a podcast with my friend Hayden called O-kei Podcast. We cover Japanese alternative fashion topics and conduct interviews with those in the alternative fashion community from a Western perspective. If you're also into comics, I just launched Hard Decora: The Comic #1 that's about Hard Decora, a mischief-loving girl gang that sells candy on the streets and wears colorful outfits, and the basic girl who wants to join them.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue