The length of a fashion show averages about 10 minutes, a short span during which design prodigies can be born while others fail, dragging small fortunes into fashion oblivion with them.
In Tokyo, it is a fine line between fashion as art and fashion as business, and that line is wavering in the wind, as was evident at the 8th Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo recently.
JFW is a biannual, six-day parade of shows established four years ago to bring a semblance of solidarity to the monthlong season known as the Tokyo Collections. But JFW is just a link in the chain of popular Japanese fashion, flanked by the hugely popular Shibuya-girl movement, Harajuku kids, Tokyo Girls Collection, Kobe Collection, Yohji Yamamoto and his Paris-based ilk, and the aforementioned off-schedule Tokyo Collection brands.