It's one size fits all - Takashi Murakami retrospective in Little Tokyo is attracting diverse crowds and is setting records.

Stephanie Bridges of Westminster is 22 years old and wearing high-heeled black boots, a short black skirt and a diamond stud in her nose. Her companion, Kalena Monte, 21, of Cypress, sports a diamond in the same location but pairs hers with a sweatshirt, athletic shoes and jeans.

Either fashion statement fits in just fine at the Takashi Murakami retrospective currently setting attendance records at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo. Museum officials say it's drawing MOCA's most diverse crowd to date.

"In the museum world, there's this kind of mythical beast called the first-time visitor, and you can tell that there are a lot of first-time visitors," says the show's curator, Paul Schimmel. "They are not as used to doing things a certain way."

That informality, Schimmel notes, has led Geffen security guards to be exceptionally vigilant, because many visitors seem to bring young children to the show, and kids tend to want to climb onto sculpture platforms to embrace Murakami's fanciful characters they way they would a wandering Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.

Although the 2002 Andy Warhol retrospective at MOCA's main location on South Grand Avenue is expected to remain the museum's most popular show, director Jeremy Strick predicts that the show of work by the contemporary Japanese artist, which opened Oct. 27 and runs through Feb. 11, will reign as the best-attended exhibition ever at the Geffen space.

With more than 15,000 visitors during its opening weekend and first-week events, Murakami has already broken the Geffen record previously held by the 2005 exhibition "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States," which drew about 6,000 visitors for the same time period.

The most up-to-date attendance total, through Monday (the museum is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays), is 41,654 visitors. Predictably, the Geffen was packed during the weekend after Thanksgiving. On Nov. 24 and 25 more than 3,500 visitors saw the exhibition, which includes a new animated film, "kaikai & kiki," and "Good Morning," a Murakami-designed video for music by Kanye West.

"Yeah, his collabo with Kanye is pretty sweet," observed visitor Monte, who along with Bridges came to the exhibition for an Asian art class at Chapman University in Orange -- the assignment was to compare pop culture influences in Murakami's art with those apparent in Warhol's work.

Not the usual crowd