warning : giant wall of text.
I’m flattered you thought I know fashion really well,
@aegis. After thoroughly re-reading what you wrote I finally can understand what you mean.
Long post ahead, be warned. Could be published as a paper titled “An Analysis on Keiko Kubota’s Haircut by ritardando, a dedicated fanboy”.
First thing first. Keiko never intended her hairstyle to be that of hime-cut. There was one old interview where Keiko stated that she intended her hair to be like Mischa Barton’s hairstyle (the one with layers and varying length in front side) but I don’t think her hair stylist managed to pull it off she had to trick it by making it somewhat like hime-cut. You could see the failure clearly in Kagayaku Sora no Shijima ni wa PV (2010 end), where Keiko’s haircut is really messy. She then cut most of her front part of her hair while leaving the back side to grow straight; making it like hime-cut, or even could be said as hime-cut (the most prominent one is in their After Eden live DVD) (2011 end). From this failure she then tried to fix her hair by regularly trimming her hair and form a layer to her hair, to the point her where at one point her hair was the shortest between all Kalafina vocalist (mid 2012) and managed to get the layered hair like Mischa’s done by the end of 2012 (Hikarifuru PV) though it’s not perfect.
Keiko then back to have her hair somewhat like hime-cut by trimming the sidelocks of her hair to cup her cheek (become cheek-length) while letting the rest of her hair to still have some kind of layer and this is what made Keiko’s hair is not hime-cut. For more description on hime-cut, look at Wikipedia or at Ichihara Yuuko from xxxHolic. You could see that Keiko’s hair is NOT QUITE hime cut because on hime-cut, aside of the cheek-length side locks the hair must be totally straight to the point where when you look at the hair from back-side it formed a straight line. Keiko’s hair formed a V-line when she put her hair all on her backside (2014 beginning, making of elemental tour) as the result of her wanting to have layered hair when people looked at her from the front side. I think by now Keiko wants to have her hair to be totally straight without cheek-length sidelocks and layered front.
Keiko is really pretty, but the only weakness her face has is the shape which is totally round and not beautifully oval like Wakana’s. This is why Keiko rarely styles her hair without sidelocks. She needs it to cover her weakness, though I think she’s still really pretty nonetheless.
Since her haircut is never intended to be hime-cut, the problem that she rarely adjusts her outfits to be fitting that of hime-cut could be set aside.
About her hair sometimes looks like helmet; I think it’s caused by she tries to get her hair back to the way it was before, long and had more volume that is lost by the constant trimming she had to do when she tried to achieve the Mischa Barton look. I know there was time where Keiko’s hair looked thick and dense on top (live vol.9 for example) but since it’s on her way to achieve the look she wants I could forgive it.
Now I still don’t get the problem with her hairline. I know the definition of hairline btw. I just didn’t see anything wrong with her accessories placement. When she’s not having her hair parted from the middle (middle parting), her hair flows from the left to the right (as could be seen from various photo from melodynail blog) so it’s just right for her to wear her hair accessories on the left side of her head (almost every live performance and photo-shoot). The only exceptions are to the beginning single cover (she then wears the accessory on the left side in live performances where she wears that dress) and believe PV where they pull Keiko’s hair to the wrong side. She mostly uses this hairstyle (pulled to one side) now (LisAni Café interview, Utage performance, the recent FJC live) and I don’t have any problem with it even before because even though her natural hairline flows from the left side, she mostly uses middle parting anyway.
Now I’m going to rant about Kalafina dresses: They should stop with the asymmetrical skirtline omg and the way too many layers they use on one dress and/or skirt. Layers on skirt would be fine if the skirtline is symmetric (or straight). Examples are the dresses Cerise posted one page before, the black/blue Magia live dresses (that would be really fine without the blue fabric thingy). Kalafina now relies on asymmetric dresses way too much to the point where their dresses are mostly a mess. When they finally have some kind of symmetrical dress they ruin it with way too many ornaments (the black live tour 2014 dresses) that cheapen the look. The only good one is the one on Wakana’s dress. Early 2014 (LisAni live-4 dresses) are a mess with way too many layers, sashes, fabric, and materials on one dress. Mid-2014 dresses (the flowery dresses with white thingy randomly patched on here and there) are also a mess. I kinda understand why they have this kind of dresses (it’s summer after all but duh). End-2014 (white and black live tour 2014 dresses) dresses are hit and miss. The top of the white ones are gorgeous, the skirts, especially Wakana’s are horrible. Random green-red-purple sashes are also unnecessary. The shoes also don’t fit the overall image of the dresses. I’ve explained the problem with the black ones earlier.
If I have decent photoshop skill I’ll re-draw their live dresses and how I think they could be perfect.
Now this is probably my longest post on this forum. I don’t really think anyone would read this giant wall of text though.
