We all know that Naoko had a big inspiration from high fashion and vintage decor in the 90s when designing her characters. Having been a big fashion history addict, I have compiled a list of EVERYTHING that I believe Naoko took the biggest inspiration from. I’m going to leave out all the well-known ones, as everyone has seen those.
Let’s start out with the most obvious (and usually missed) representations from the 1991-1995 Terry Mugellier fashion show, where Naoko found inspiration for Cooan, Petz, Calveras, Serenity, Setusna and Hotaru.
FIRST OFF FULL DISCLAIMER THIS IS MY OWN OPINON BASED ON MY KNOWLEDGE OF EARLY 90s COTURE FASHIONShe also took inspiration for Beryl during this fashion show, although not completely the same color, and the necklace and jewelry were completely another story themselves, as Naoko loved to add other Vintage jewelry to the mix
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Moving right along to Sailor Moon R, there isn’t that much to talk about other than the Men of the series, as we’ve covered basically every Phantom Sister except for Berthier, which was really easy to find , as it hit me in the face. I have noticed that with some of these designes, Naoko just took inspiration, and not the full outfit like with Calveras and Cooan
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In the case of Diamond, Rubeus and Saphir, it’s a bit harder to pinpoint since they were based off of popular Gucci/Versace/Popular suits at the time, with embellished jewels.
One thing I will point out, however is Everything up until this point was mostly based off of Thierry Mugler.
Moving on to S.
The season where Naoko only pulled partial inspiration, while still making it known that she was directly referencing the fashion icon.
The season that to me, is completely VERSACE. From the crossing on the breast portions of the outfits to the placement of the fabrics, the Witches 5 (with the exception of Kaori, we’ll come to that in a minute) are what we could call “VERSACE MODELS” Here are a few examples
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Now, Kaori on the other hand, is pretty much the embodiment of the ‘Power woman in a power suit. All are Versace as well.
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Snow Kaguya as we know, is based off of a vintage statue, but I have reason to believe she was also inspired by this at the same fashion show in 1992 that inspired much of the first season designs.
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The starlights pose was inspired by the same fashion show in 1992 as well
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I will do a follow up to this later, this is all my mind has time for at the moment.
Feel free to discuss and tell me what you think!