After Paris, London, New York and the rest of the fashion world has heaved a sigh of relief and headed home to ruminate on another season's offerings, Japan's style-setters tardily gird their loins to endure the farcically fragmented nonevent that is Tokyo Fashion Week.
Outside Japan, even industry experts would be forgiven for not knowing that Tokyo even had any collections; overseas press coverage amounts to zero column inches, and buyers from overseas boutiques and department stores steer well clear of the impenetrable event.
But who cares what the rest of the world thinks? With the Japanese being the world's highest-spending fashion victims, the domestic market is big enough to support more than 35 shows staged over a frustratingly protracted schedule in venues that are scattered all over the city.
With any domestic brand that attracts even a whiff of success invariably defecting to foreign fashion capitals at the earliest opportunity, the ranks of Japan's top-level designers who show here are constantly thinning; while the sluggish economy kills off several labels each season. The latest of these victims has been National Standard, the teeny pret-a-porter experiment from UNIQLO operator Fast Retailing.
Meanwhile, some brands find that staging a runway collection in Tokyo just doesn't generate enough exposure to justify the expense; this season, fashion editors' favorite TOGA and geeky hopefuls Tokyo Ripper opted to show in static exhibition formats.
Ito Mari, who owns four fashion boutiques in Nagoya and Tokyo, is disparaging about the standard of the collections she sees here.
"Compared to what I am used to seeing in New York or Paris, the catwalk shows in Tokyo are very poor," she says. "Overseas shows often have an extremely emotional effect on me, but here I only ever feel deflated. And besides," she continues with a smirk, "there are so few hot models"
Finding quality clothes-horses is a perennial problem for Tokyo designers. Top stars from Paris and New York can never be persuaded to stoop so low as to feature in a Japanese fashion show, and budgets rarely stretch to more than a dozen third-ranked girls. In stark contrast, the latest Chanel show in Paris featured 99 of the world's most expensive models -- and a special appearance by Nicole Kidman.
In Tokyo, cult brand Hisui managed to muster just eight models for this season's show. Despite a shoestring production, it was actually a relative success, as designer Hiroko Ito made the most of a cute gimmick -- items that could be scrunched up and zipped into heart-, star- and cloud-shaped cushions.
This season, though, it was the big-selling Frapbois brand that grabbed most of the limelight with a wacky show in which models with blonde Afro pigtails had to hop, skip and jump over felt squares laid out on the runway.
Notably, designer Eri Utsugi flew in top stylists from Paris to spruce up her signature pajama-look creations that combined American thrift-store chic with traditional Japanese geometric patterns.
Acrobatic maneuvers were also required of the models for upcoming design duo Theatre Products, who had them tip-toeing down a beam at the end of the catwalk dressed in '50s Italian party-girl outfits with bold checks and stripes.
Standout dresses and tailoring
Dress Camp, whose designer Iwaya Toshiyuki urges guys and gals to do just that, was another to generate a buzz this season with a typically glitzy presentation.
The brand's raunchy dresses and wasp-waisted tailoring stood out a mile among Tokyo's generally dour designs, and its flamboyance seems to have tapped into a new, upbeat vibe among Tokyo fashionistas. Building on its growing fan base, the brand is set to open a flagship store in Aoyama next year.
According to High Fashion magazine editor Mariko Nishitani, though, the current trend for dressy, classic looks has exposed many Tokyo designers whose technical skills don't match up to those of their overseas counterparts.
"Japanese designers excel at deconstruction," she says. "There are so few occasions for party dresses in Tokyo, I think that eveningwear is best left to the Europeans."
True to form, he most successful shows this season undoubtedly came courtesy of brands that stuck to what Tokyo does best: moody, deconstructed fashion.
Ultra-trendy boutique WR's Triptych line was shown on a sprinter's racetrack referencing legendary couturier Balenciaga, together with '60s silhouettes and incorporating origami-like folding techniques.
Pushing the conceptual ticket to the limit was newcomer Julius, whose show featured a series of clothing dissected and rearranged in menacing black on hooded models.
The saving grace
Besides the chin-stroking set, it was men's fashion that proved to be the season's saving grace.
High Fashion editor Nishitani explains that menswear designers can experiment more because Japanese guys are often more adventurous than their female peers. "Most Tokyo fashion takes its cues from the street," she says. "And recently there haven't been so many girls doing anything innovative -- the boys are leading the way."
Old hand Takeo Kikuchi bowed out from designing his brand last season, entrusting creative direction to Taishi Nobukuni, a graduate of London's St. Martin's College. The rejuvenated label has suddenly become cool again, with its funky mix of '70s vintage looks and contemporary street styling a huge commercial and critical success.
Japan's hottest menswear brand, Mister Hollywood, came up with a retro-influenced show overseen by a sinister man in black seated on the catwalk.
A simpler take on men's style comes from Whereabouts, designed by Hidetaka Fukuzono who studied at Antwerp's famous Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His plain but tasteful and well-constructed clothing has proved a winner with strong and silent types here in Tokyo. Whereabouts already shows in Paris, and Fukuzono looks set to be yet another in the stream of talented designers abandoning the Tokyo catwalk. Surely, but sadly, he will not be the last -- at least until Tokyo lives up to its potential and gets its fashion act together.
