AMIAYA

AMIAYA are a Japanese j-pop duo. Dreaming of becoming an artist since they were little girls, the twin sisters came to Tokyo when they were 15. In order to get their name out there, they started off as models for hair salons and street snap on magazines. The twin sisters literally started their career on Harajuku’s street from zero. At the age of 17, they became amateur models for many magazines such as mina, PS, Zipper, SEDA and CUTiE on a regular basis. With the number of fans who copy their creative way of dressing, original hairstyle and make-up increased rapidly, they became popular amateur models representing Harajuku. ”AYA AMI BOOK”, which was published in July 2010, achieved 40,000 copies total with initial print of 30,000 copies and additional print of 10,000 copies, marking a remarkable record for amateur models. From that time, they became regular models and cover models for Shibuya-kei popular magazine Popsister pursuing their belief that “Fashion is freedom, we want to break down boundaries between Harajuku-kei and Shibuya-kei”. Moreover, they expanded their activities to various genres of fashion magazines including the cover and a series of essays in NYLON JAPAN. The highest PV to their official blog reached 1.45 million in one day. While they became the hottest twins in Japan, they are also up-and-coming models in Asia with over 23,000 followers on Chinese version of Twitter “Weibo”. Ray China also featured a 8 page AMIAYA article and interview. Apart from modelling, they launched a popular fashion brand ”jouetie” as concepters and quickly opened 6 directly managed stores in LAFORET, PARCO and LUMINE. The brand continues to be popular with more new stores opening. Now the twins have transformed into artists from models. They started another series of essays in Vivi magazine and also have been making an appearances on CM, TV dramas as well as a regular radio programs. Under the concept of “TOKYO POP” with their sights set on overseas, the most powerful and charismatic twins in Asia convey fashion with beat from Asia to the world. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.