Sexy, salacious and in your face, Dress Camp is an anomaly in the dour world of Tokyo fashion.
Japanese designers are infamous for their somber, formless creations, and all of Tokyo's successful runway brands are either quirkily intellectual or exercises in dark deconstruction. So when an unknown textile designer launches an ultra-glam label that owes more to Versace's late '80s rococo opulence than Yohji Yamamoto's all-black minimalism, nobody thought it would take off.
That was September 2002, but now, just three years later, Toshikazu Iwaya's Dress Camp is being hailed as the savior of the Tokyo catwalk. Who could have guessed that consumers would rush to buy sultry, skin-tight dresses in blindingly bright floral prints, zebra stripes, Mondrian grids and -- heaven forbid -- brand logos?