Watching the Fashion Week Tokyo models pounding polished catwalks in the glitzy Hikarie building in shopping-central Shibuya, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Paris. However, since Mercedes-Benz’s debut as a major sponsor this time last year, now three seasons ago, designers ...

Department store Parco is aiming to fill the vacuum created by the rapidly declining gyaru (gal) culture that used to define the Shibuya area of Tokyo. By taking aspects of the otaku (geek) culture of Akihabara and re-imagining them through art and fashion in ...

15.0%’s ice-cream spoons have already been featured in this column, and now they’re being complemented by Naoki Terada’s new Ice-Cream Cup. Made of porcelain, this container takes on the form of a flat-based ice-cream cone, which is not just a fun design but one ...

Fans of French luxury brand Louis Vuitton are still seeing spots before their eyes. The brand’s latest collection with Yayoi Kusama comes after a string of highly successful artist collaborations that began in 2002 with Takashi Murakami. It really was only a matter of ...

The Airleaf Mini is an interesting product that makes use of your fan or air conditioner. It contains little beads filled with oils extracted from fir trees, which purifies air as it’s blown through by cutting down the carbon dioxide and restricting production of ...

Isabel Marant, the queen of French haute-casual wear, has finally opened her first shop in Japan, right off of Tokyo’s Omotesando promenade. When it comes to French style, chic and sleek uniforms of black usually come to mind. Parisian designer Marant’s collections, however, are ...

Personalized cubicle There’s nothing enticing about working in a cubicle space, aside from a sense of privacy, but Torafu Architects have somehow made the cubicle a desired option for the home. At first glance, the Koloro Desk might look like a voting booth, but ...

The “Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion” exhibition first showed at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2010 and traveled to the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2011. Highly acclaimed by art critics and fashion fans, the show is finally making ...

Asked to name a seminal New York City-born musician with an intrepid preference for over-the-top fashion, and Lady Gaga would surely the first name to roll off the tongue. But there’s another female musician from the city who influenced global fashion with her unique ...

Kouichi Okamoto of Kyouei Design, who usually creates household items, has launched his first line of jewelry — and of course, it’s not your average collection of fashion accessories. The series is titled “form of the function,” and all the pieces are made from ...

Colloquially called “The Oscars of Design,” the Design Museum of London Design Awards are prestigious accolades given in six categories to the most innovative and inspiring designs of the year — and this year’s top honors in the fashion category went to Japan’s own ...