I think ayu in the past has huge influence on the japanese girls.
I remember the sunglasses, leopard print, war print, the fox tail and a lot of over things.
In an article if i'm remember well, they said that the day or she has began a contract with Kosé in two days the sales of the products that ayumi used in the TV commercial have increase a lot 500 000 lipstick and this product who was number 3 or 4 in sale is become 1st thanks to ayu.
I will try to find this article. On her peak she has huge influence on the teenager more than Kana for sure.
edit:
TIME
"Unsurprisingly, Hamasaki's sway over pop culture attracts marketers who are keen to borrow her magic; and she's happy to share. All but two of her singles to date have been tied in with either a commercial or a TV program. She currently endorses the products of six companies, from Panasonic digital cameras to Kirin sports drinks.
When she began appearing in ads for cosmetics maker Kose, its mascara went from No. 4 to No. 1 within two months and a new lip gloss sold 500,000 units in its first two days on the shelves.
But it takes more than fashion sense to propel a pop star to stardom of this scale. Hamasaki's own fans can't quite explain what it is about her that incites such frenzied devotion. "How can I put it?" muses Chika Tamura, 16, gazing at a poster of her idol in a crowded HMV shop in Tokyo's Shibuya district. "Ayu is the me I wish I was. She just ... gets it." As a singer, her very imperfections endear her to her legions of fans, who range well beyond teenage schoolgirls. "Her voice is screechy, even irritating sometimes," says Arisa Kaneko, a 28-year-old TV writer. "But that just makes her more human. You know she's singing her heart out." For Ken Yoshida, 27, of Ise City in Mie prefecture, the Hamasaki-devoted site he maintains on the Web "makes my life worth living."
Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz1sTTUcZAI
Edit (2) Another article:
"Hime-kei appears to have been inspired by American filmmaker Sofia Coppola's movie Marie Antoinette, with its lush rendering of the decadence of the court of Louis XVI. The rush of young Japanese women to emulate the look of 18th-century French aristocrats has grown from a fad into something of a movement,
whose leader is the popular singer Ayumi Hamasaki. It even has its own magazine, Koakuma Ageha, with a circulation of 350,000. If Coppola's movie created the wave, Osaka-based Jesus Diamante was ready to ride it. Established in 2001, the label had offered luxurious clothing styled for a hypothetical heiress with a likeness to French actress Brigitte Bardot. But the impact of Marie Antoinette prompted it to introduce such lines as Marie Wanpi, with a ball gown sporting a large ribbon on the chest and a Cinderella coat with a fur collar and sleeve edges. "