Hirofumi Kurino, co-founder of United Arrows, was part of the cohort of industry figures who helped launch the event. “We thought, how can we make Tokyo Fashion Week a charming place to be? Because we had no big names: no Comme des Garçons, no Issey Miyake, no Yohji Yamamoto,” Kurino says. “So I said, why don’t we promote the younger or independent brands? The first few years were not easy. But step by step, we had success in introducing the young generation. And especially in recent years, it’s become very fruitful.”
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Hundreds of designers have come through the week: Mikio Sakabe, founder of his eponymous brand and the Grounds footwear line, has been a key figure in uniting designers and mentoring new talent in Tokyo. “Mikio Sakabe and [his wife, designer] Jenny Fax pioneered a new generation of designers,” says Kumiko Takano, a fashion professor at Meiji University and founder of Tokyo-based publication Across. Sakabe’s own beginning was in 2007 as part of a group showcase that included Taro Horiuchi (now the creative director of Kolor) and Writtenafterwards by Yoshikazu Yamagata, who founded seminal fashion school Coconogacco alongside Sakabe. (The school has produced some of Tokyo’s brightest new stars, including Soshi Otsuki, a finalist for this year’s LVMH Prize.)
International designers have also been part of the mix since the start, with some more surprising than others. For the showcase in 2007, Sakabe invited two edgy young Antwerp graduates: Helena Lumelsky and a then-unknown Demna Gvasalia. The duo’s presentation under their brand Stereotypes — which featured a collection based on tropes such as school teachers and bouncers — showed the early seeds of the collections that would later shake the entire global industry. “I have no idea what happened to the clothes — they’re all still in Japan somewhere!” says Lumelsky, who returned to Tokyo to show in the city under her own brand, Lena Lumelsky, in 2017, and is currently working on a new project with Grounds.
The sponsors
Throughout its tenure, Tokyo Fashion Week has been supported by three major sponsors that have reflected the shifts in fashion’s funding model: Mercedes-Benz (2011 to 2015), Amazon (2016 to 2019) and Rakuten (2020 to present). The current sponsor focuses on e-commerce tie-ins and its By R initiative, which funds the show of a prominent designer each season (for SS26, it will be Fetico).
Mami Osugi, a fashion editor and member of the JFW Next Brand Award selection committee, points to some of the high-profile shows that the week has hosted, including Toga’s 20th anniversary show at the National Art Center, a joint presentation by Sacai and Undercover in 2017, and a Rakuten-supported Kolor show for SS22 that was staged inside a moving train. “Those presentations by brands that command a strong presence in the global market had both impact and significance, precisely because they took place here at home [in Japan],” Osugi says.