Seiko Kuboi stops at the end of the catwalk and poses with hand on hip, showing off her gold lame-edged jacket, long black skirt and black bolero hat. The crowd goes wild. "Whoo-hoo! Looking good! Great hat!" they scream in raucous appreciation.
Not the kind of uninhibited response you'd expect from the average oh-so-cool audience at a runway collection, but then this isn't your everyday fashion show. The 100 models at the Michiko Sakaguchi Spring/Summer Debut Collection at Ikebukuro's Sunshine Prince Hotel range in age from 40 to 80, and all are amateurs. The aim is less to hit the pages of Vogue and set the fashion world on fire than to challenge perceptions of aging and inspire the models to find new confidence in themselves.
"There are about 20 million people over 65 [the average age of retirement] in Japan today," says Hideo Hotta, president of You Kikaku, the company that promoted the event. "Out of that group less than 10 percent are bedridden or in need of nursing care. The rest are healthy. But once people reach 65, all they do is worry about their age and their future."