Spurned by many top Japanese designers, patchy in quality and sprawling over a month at a mishmash of venues, the twice-yearly Tokyo Collections -- whose fall/winter 2004/05 shows end this week -- still lay claim to being the highpoints of Asia's fashion year. But are Tokyo's days numbered as the `Paris of the East'?
As the music dies and the lights dim, the conspicuous hordes of leggy European models who for the past month have been calling Tokyo "home," are about to skip out on the first available flights back home.
Tokyo's fashion extravaganza is over for another season.
Now, after all has been said and even more has been done, it is left to fashion commentators to sort the wheat from the chaff: to highlight the hits and malign the misses presented by some of Japan's leading designers; and to predict, with varying degrees of correctness, what will be on A-list clothes racks for the coming fall/winter seasons.
Tokyo's fashion-world showpiece has dragged on this time for close to a month. The event, involving shows by 50 different designers, will "officially" end when the lights go out at Yoshie Inaba's presentation on Tuesday.
But there's more, much more, to Japanese fashion than a -- very extended -- season of catwalk parades.
Standing back and looking at the bigger picture it's interesting to see how things have evolved over the last couple of decades or so -- and to consider where they may be heading.
Back in the 1980s, a largely one-way exodus of designers to Paris began when the likes of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto ventured into the unknown and kick-started the fashion world with funereal, deconstructed forms that were instantly christened "Hiroshima chic." Now, amazingly, the opposite appears to be the case: Europe's fashion houses are racing here in a bid to get in on the action (and profits) of the fast-paced Japanese market.
Take English fashion maestro Paul Smith, for instance.
Smith, who is undoubtedly the most successful British designer of all time in Japan, with his quirky "oh-so-British" pieces, has built up an astonishing 200 stores across the country. Whether it's an eponymous Paul Smith outlet (his chain for ready-made menswear), Paul Smith Women's (same for les demoiselles), Paul Smith Collection (upmarket men's label) or R. Newbold (traditional English-style menswear) -- wherever you are in Japan you are never too far away from one of his shops.
Nowadays, in fact, in some of Tokyo's ritziest locales, whether the Ginza, Omotesando, Minami-Aoyama or Roppongi Hills, the concentration of global names such as Gucci, Hermes, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari and Tiffany is testament to the fashion market's phenomenal leverage on Japanese buyers -- and to the huge sums invested by overseas brands to acquire real estate offering them the best shop windows in the land.
But though many overseas fashion houses are jumping on the bandwagon, not all are fashion bluebloods.
Creative -- and competitive -- Korean designers have come and gone; likewise the occasional Hong Kong designer has blown a much-needed breath of fresh air through the fashion scene here.
This time round, a new name on the Tokyo Collections schedule was Turkish designer Sevgi Harman, chief stylist for the Istanbul-based brand Harmanli. Harman presented her fall/winter 2004/05 line for the first time in Japan at an intimate show in Tokyo's chic Aoyama district.
Asked why she decided to show here rather than in China, where the fashion market has been booming in the last few years of rapid economic growth, she said, "Tokyo is the center for high-end fashion, so it is suitable for our [fur and leather] pieces.
"Even though the brand has been selling in Japan for three years, there are several new points this time," she explained further after the show. "Firstly, we are using some different furs, and then there is transparent leather, which is kind of experimental. And other pieces are finished with Swarovski crystals or with gold detailing."
But it's not only because it's a (well-heeled) shopper's paradise that Tokyo is accorded the status of Asia's fashion capital -- rightfully claiming a place alongside Paris, Milan, London and New York as one of the world's five fashion hubs. As well, no other Asian nation but Japan has produced so many successful creators, as measured by their successes in Paris or their contributions to 20th- and now 21st-century fashion. Here, the names of Issey Miyake, Hanae Mori, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and Yuki Torii, as well as newcomers such as Jun Takahashi and Shinichiro Arakawa spring readily to mind.
Even though before the 1960s there was virtually no fashion industry here at all, Japanese designers have since come to be among the best the world has, and the top names easily rivals those of Paris, Milan and London.
It was back then in the early '60 that Hanae Mori, who is now often referred to as Japan's first lady of fashion, began her career as a creator of clothes for the cinema and stage. This in turn led to her -- following a meeting in Paris in 1961 with Coco Chanel -- becoming a fashion designer and couturier. Now, more than four decades on, the oeuvre of couturiere extraordinaire Mori -- the only Japanese ever admitted as a member of Paris' prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Couture et de la Mode -- is a byword the world over for fashion artistry.
Others who have made their mark the world over include Issey Miyake, whose early 1990s Pleats-brand pieces were were truly of museum quality, while both Kawakubo's and Yamamoto's funereal creations have been wakeup calls to fashion as a whole. Japanese designers are here to stay.
Meanwhile, the infatuation of Japanese consumers with anything associated with fashion or beauty has turned the nation into one of the most clothes conscious in the world -- home of the fashion victim if ever there was one.
And what a kaleidoscope it is.
Anything and everything includes styles from the homegrown, suntanned ganguro tribes of Shibuya, to thrift shop and hip-hop, Gothic/Lolita and the best of European -- Versace, Dior, Chanel and all points in between.
One of the best ways to take the sizzling temperature of Japanese fashion is to spend half an hour on the corner of Omotesando and Meiji-dori in Tokyo, or hang out at Hachiko in nearby Shibuya or, in Kansai, stroll around Shinsaibashi in Osaka -- you'll get a fast-paced A-Z of Japanese fashion.
However, though Tokyo unquestionably rules the Asian roost, it is not without competition.
In Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, to name but a few of the more important venues, fashion events showcasing local designers are becoming more frequent.
Fashion weeks are often held in these cities in conjunction with trade shows attracting thousands of buyers, as well as the international media legions. In addition, invited members of the public are also there, attending seminars, workshops and the many shows staged at the same time.
The intense interest in such events that this writer has witnessed over several years in Seoul and Hong Kong has always been astonishing; while the biannual Hong Kong Fashion Week organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council is always as crowded as Ginza on a Sunday afternoon.
So, even though Tokyo is presently at the top of Asia's fashion tree, and has been staging showcase fashion shows twice a year since the mid-1980s, it still has never hosted events on the scale of those held in Paris, Frankfurt, Seoul or Hong Kong, for instance.
When the Council of Fashion Designers, Tokyo (the designers' governing body), first started presenting shows in their current form, journalists from Australia, Europe and the United States used to come here to cover Japan's offerings to the fashion world. Likewise, buyers from around the globe flew in to tap into the latest Tokyo trends. It was truly an international event.
Now, though, with the current season extending over a period of a month, and with many of the main Japanese players -- including Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Naoki Takizawa, Junya Watanabe and Jun Takahashi -- showing in Paris instead, no one can be bothered to make the trek to this far-flung corner of the world for collections of mixed quality scattered all over a city that's expensive to stay in for so long.
There is a need to streamline events, to showcase Tokyo -- or Japanese -- fashion in conjunction with other events over a short period of time. Two weeks is more than long enough for everyone to get their act together -- and if they do, and if the end result equals quality, then once again the spotlight will shine on something for which Japan is justly famous -- its ability to create world-class fashion and to dictate trends worldwide.
