Trends of Korea: Bunny Bows ♥ 토끼머리띠

Want to know about some Korean Fashion Trends???  Today’s is a popular one that started around 2010~ “Bunny Bows“!

Via Fantastyle.com

Bunny bow /  토끼머리띠 is a common name for the style of skinny long twist bow with wire sewn in, it can be shaped any way you please~ but the idea is to have it sticking out almost like…. yes, Bunny Ears!

 

I cant say for sure when this bow first came into existence, I mean…. it is just a bow with wire! I am sure various versions of it have been lurking around for some time and I know lots of older character designs had similar bows~ in fact the first time I started seeing this bow all I could think of was Aerith from FFVII and the Japanese Vocaloid character Kagamine Rin lol!  Thanks to some sifting around the internet I do have an idea when the modern fashion trend itself was born and started to snowball though!

Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton~ Fashion Week 2009

The birth of what now is a huge assortment of fashion accessories happened in a very expected place, the runway!  In fall of 2009 Marc Jacobs did a collection for Louis Vuitton at Fashion Week that featured large shaped bunny bows on the models, it was a huge hit and everyone was talking and blogging about it!

 

Vogue quickly placed the Louis Vuitton Bunny Bows on its new cover, Madonna worked with Louis Vuitton on a promotional shoot sporting the bunny bow, celebrities jumped in on this trend and started wearing the pieces for events, a smaller Louis Vuitton Bunny Bow was launched for the mainstream, and of course the replicas/imitations/re imagined versions started rolling out by early 2010 to meet the demands of the everyday shoppers who wanted a bow of their own for a lower price!

I think its a very easy trend to process too… “Ok giant wire bows, I like that! Lets get some!”  not very complicated!

August 2009 Elle Girl Magazine with K-pop group SNSD (Girls Generation) + Louis Vuitton Bunny Bows

Meanwhile, Korean fashion magazines also jumped at the runway collection and quickly had the new Louis Vuitton Bunny Bows in photo shoots here!

Through 2010 it started to appear a bit more commonly around Korea with variations on pop stars, but the major BOOM really seemed to happen late 2012 early 2011 in Seoul. It went from just a few~to almost every Drama, K-pop star, Actress, etc rocking a bunny bow of some kind in the media! Everyday Korean girls LOVED how fun and cute the Bunny Bow was, so soon the masses hit the stores to wear Bunny Bows 토끼머리띠 of their own.

Quickly the stores stocked up to supply the demand and soon EVERY SHOP had tons of styles of the Bunny Bow! By the middle of the year every girl in Korea seemed to have at least one, if not several styles and sizes!  Some bows had a bit more cubby shape, others came long so you could twist them high…

Even giant ones like the pop stars rocked ended up in all the shops and boutiques♥  more daring girls would wear these out on the weekend!

I think that Koreans took hold of this trend and it became such a huge hit because it is a very sweet and wearable piece, plus lots of girls here really like sweet animal things so the cuteness of having  a bow + ears was appealing to many here!

Romantic-style pastel polka dot Bunny Bow ♥ ♥ BUY HERE ♥ ♥

Even though the Bunny Bow 토끼머리띠 is popular with the Middle – High School aged girls, you also see lots of well-dressed college girls around Ewha University sporting them in a more sophisticated style… in fact the whole Edae area was (and still is as of this posting, although the trend has died down in 2012) a great place to find a HUGE selection of Bunny Bows! The choices are endless now!

♥ Down and Up! Two personalities with one bow ♥

Korean girls love hair accessories, you can go broke buying them if you are not careful. With uniforms and modest feminine clothing styles being commonplace with young girls here, one of the popular forms of self expression is pieces for your hair~ Bunny Bows work great for lots of girls because not only are they eye-catching and unique, but the style is also so versatile thanks to the wire! I like that I can mix my bow up depending on my outfit.

Thanks to the wire you can wear a Bunny Bow countless ways!

They also made a smaller hair tie version that looks great with ponytails or a high bun! ♥ ♥ BUY HERE ♥ ♥

Skinny wire version! These look great with a lot of twisting at the base!

For a small bit of cute we have a bitty plastic version from DalcomHolic!

Bunny bows also (I believe) pushed the Korean trend of bunny bow and bunny ear cellphone cases… in 2011 almost every other girl seemed to have one of these cases when I rode the subway! You can read more about that trend in my other post!

XXXXX WILL ADD SOON XXXXX

And here is a picture of me in one of my many Bunny Bows!  I really love them!

♥ ♥ ♥

So where can you buy a bunny bow of your own?  Well since the trend is/was so huge they should be very easy to find online, and should be fairly inexpensive. In the post above I have a few shop links to YesStyle who sells Korean brands and still has a few 토끼머리띠 left. The trend has cooled down here in Korea for 2012 sadly~ you still see the bows in shops, but the streets are not filled with girls wearing them like this time last year. Thankfully the internet is still filled with them, so you can stock up online!

I think they are a very cute and versatile enough that this accessory will be around for a long time though~  Some trends go away after just a month here, so the fact it was around for almost a FULL YEAR in Seoul says a lot! I still wear mine, and if you like hair ribbons you should totally buy at least one because they are a lot of fun!

♥ ♥ ♥

Do you have any Korean Bunny bows? Do you want one? How do you like to wear yours? ^^

CuteinKorea.com


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