While Tokyo's womenswear seems to be content fighting for a place in the domestic market, the endlessly repeated adage that Amazon Fashion Week Tokyo's menswear is the collection's most viable export product appears to have finally come true, with many of the brands tipped for greatness either gracing the schedules of fashion weeks abroad or lining the racks of showrooms at home.
A look back at past seasons' winners of the week's most prestigious industry award — the Tokyo Metropolitan Government-sponsored Tokyo Fashion Award — reveals an almost entirely menswear-dominated selection that includes Ethosens, Avalone, Coohem, D.TT.K and Whiz Limited, despite being a competition that is open to all. Womenswear proved stronger this season, with brands Yohei Ohno and cult favorite Roggykei joining the indubitably saleable assets of Taak and Bed J.W. Ford among others. Hopefully, as a result, we will start to see the women's talent plucked out of the present domestic market introversion in due course.
Needless to say, this is good news for Tokyo fashion on a global scale but less so for the biannual domestic collections, with many of the brands who made their names at the week in previous seasons plucked off the schedule, with the notable exception of Noriyuki Shimizu's Name. Add to this the ongoing exodus of headliner-level talent such as Masanori Morikawa's Christian Dada, which chose to make the fashion pilgrimage to the menswear collections in Paris this year, and 99%is' Bajowoo, who returned to his native South Korea for Seoul Fashion Week.