Fruits (stylized "FRUiTS") was a monthly Japanese street fashion magazine founded in 1997 by photographer Shoichi Aoki . Though FRUiTS covered styles found throughout Tokyo , it is associated most closely with the fashion subcultures found in Tokyo's Harajuku district . The magazine primarily focused on individual styles found outside the fashion-industry mainstream, as well as subcultures specific to Japan, such as lolita and ganguro , and local interpretations of larger subcultures like punk and goth .

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For over two decades, Japanese photographer Shoichi Aoki has been documenting the most outlandish, provocative and definitive Tokyo street fashion.

Humongous in the subculture of Harajuku? "I get that question quite often," said Shoichi Aoki, the Japanese photographer whose second book tracking Tokyo street fashion, "Fresh Fruits," (Phaidon Press) has just been released. "While Madonna culled her style tips from fringe communities in the United States, Stefani borrows heavily from Japanese youth culture," said Rachel Weingarten, a onetime celebrity stylist who is now a New York beauty guru. Stefani's homage is not surprising considering that Japanese culture heavily influences our modern tastes, ranging from sushi being sold in supermarkets to Quentin Tarantino's celebrating Japanese film styles with his "Kill Bill" movies. By 1987, he began publishing a magazine called Street in Tokyo, which featured his photographs and emphasized his philosophy about the importance of what people wear in real life versus the runways. Street, which is published monthly and sold in hip Bay Area shops, features Japanese, American and European designer fashion alongside Tokyo residents dressed to the nines in a city that prides itself on being well turned out. By the mid-'90s, Aoki noticed another strain emerging in street fashion, particularly in Harajuku, where the streets were closed to traffic on Sunday, and there had been a long-running, almost carnival-like scene in nearby Yoyogi Park, with live bands attracting dancers, some dressed in Elvis- era styles, others sporting the filmy balloon pants of "Arabian Nights" fantasies. Aoki began photographing the sometimes outrageous looks, asking the people he selected to explain themselves and their clothes briefly by answering a questionnaire that includes musical and fashion influences, age and job. Aoki captured them in their glory, where 19th century ladies' maids meet the 21st century wearing pale makeup with dramatic eyes and lips, lacy white baby-doll dresses, black lace crinolines, corsets, bat- shaped bags and all the variations the basics can generate. The author of the forthcoming book "How to Cosplay," the first in an eight-part series on getting the costumes exactly right, Poulos says that spontaneity then solidifies into the precise way to create a look.