Even the heavens were smiling on Tokyo Girls Collection. Balmy 19-degree temperatures — the year's highest up until then — provided the perfect setting last Saturday for the Spring/Summer edition of this hugely popular fashion-show-cum-showbiz extravaganza, allowing most of the 22,000 teenage and twentysomething female attendees to turn out in their snappiest spring skirts, with bare legs and high heels.
Tokyo Girls Collection was started in 2005 by Xavel Inc., operators of the mobile-phone Web site Girlswalker.com, as a way of promoting the clothes for sale on their site. In order to market the event to their 7 million mostly 15- to 24-year-old female users, they created a hybrid formula of fashion show, rock concert, TV variety program, amusement park and shopping mall. Tickets for the sixth installment, held on March 15, sold for between ¥3,000 and ¥10,000. They sold out. In fact, all five of the previous TGCs sold out, too — a strong indication that the formula is a winner.
One of the keys to TGC's success has been its nurturing of young local fashion models to the status of becoming celebrities. Most attendees The Japan Times spoke to named as the highlight of the day the chance to see this bevvy of beauties walk the 40-meter LED-encrusted runway that cleaved the massive Yoyogi National Stadium in central Tokyo.