Retiring gravure idol Ayana Nishinaga shares secrets of her wardrobe

The veteran gravure idol Ayana Nishinaga is to retire from the industry after an 18-year career that began at the age of 12.

She released her fiftieth DVD in 2025, appropriately titled Bye-bye!, and appears in the current issue of Weekly Playboy, which has released a digital photo book called The Last to accompany her final shoot, suggestively featuring the model in a wedding dress.

The 30-year-old from Okayama describes in her interview in the magazine how she hopes to get married in her early thirties and start a family.

The magazine shoot features Nishinaga enjoying a “bath” with her old gravure costumes.

“I had intended to take everything with me, but there was so much of it that I ended up cramming as much as I could into five large suitcases and bags in total. I’ve never counted precisely, but including what I have at home, I think there were over 400 pieces of clothing.”

As you might expect for a gradol, she particularly has a lot of swimsuits and school uniforms.

“I probably have around 30 uniforms. Some were given to me by fans, and I still have the skirt from my high school uniform.”

How does she keep all these clothes at home?

“I have a six-drawer chest of drawers specifically for swimsuits, where I store them by color.”

Does she really need so many swimsuits?

“Since I was holding private photo shoots and events every month, I often wore the same swimsuit only once so that the regular attendees wouldn’t be disappointed by seeing the same swimsuit. I also prepared swimsuits specifically for instant photos. When I debuted, online shopping wasn’t as well-developed, so finding swimsuits was quite difficult.”

It must cost a lot to maintain such a wardrobe?

“In recent years, brands like Shein have made it much cheaper, but back then, the prices were quite high. A single item could cost over ¥10,000. I think the total amount I spent on swimwear, underwear, school uniforms, and competitive swimwear probably exceeded ¥10 million.”

We always assumed that the management agency or gravure magazine bore the cost of these costumes, but it seems that idols generally have to pay for it themselves. In the case of a cosplay superstar like Enako, you could end up with a mini warehouse of costumes.

Nishinaga will give some of her old swimsuits to other idols but there’s one particular bikini that she wants to keep hold of and pass on to her daughter in the future.

Alongside her modeling, Nishinaga has long worked as an editor for the gravure magazine Cream and plans to focus more on that kind of work in the future.

Her final pool photo shoot is on May 31, which will be her final gravure event before she retires for good.