"The latest Japanese fashion craze" is definitely not what it seems.
The Queensland Sunday Mail reported last week that men's heads were madly swivelling in Japan over teens sporting see-through skirts that reveal the buttock cheeks and thongs or underwear of the wearer. But, the report authoritatively explained, the naughty bits are actually cleverly painted onto the fabric.
Turns out the newspaper was duped by an Internet hoax that's been circulating as an e-mail reading: "What you see below are not see-thru skirts. They are actually prints on the skirts to make it look as if the panties are visible. They are the current rage in Japan."
Web detectives say that the skirts probably don't exist and the photos are likely the result of some fancy mouse work. Says David Emery, author of Urban Legends and Folklore: "This is the latest fashion craze in Japan? I don't buy it ... These images show definite signs of being Photoshopped."
Mr. Emery points out that the legs of the women in the photos match perfectly with the alleged patterns on the skirt. Another Internet sleuth site, www.snopes.com , agrees.
"Lacking any evidence to the contrary, we'd guess that these pictures have been manipulated, taken from some other source and used out of context, or deliberately concocted to lend credence to a fabricated story," snopes.com states.
The latter site did point out that Japan is no stranger to bizarre fashion, showing photos of "infamous breast scarves." The scarves, which hang down in the right spot on the chest after being wound around the neck once, are capped at either end by a false mammary. However, the scarves were part of an artistic exhibition, not a commercial product.
It isn't just the Aussie paper that got excited about the story. Business people around the world have contacted Kjeld Duits, a Japan-based journalist and fashion photographer, asking him where they can get their hands on some of these skirts to import them to their own countries.
Reached yesterday, Mr. Duits said he's "very close to ascertaining which magazine in Japan originally published the images that have been used by an imaginative hoaxer to fool so many people."
