“All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players / They have their exits and their entrances / And one man in his time plays many parts …”

Considering they’ve unveiled past site-specific collections in an office furniture display room, a luxury day spa, a stretch hummer, a shipping dock and a rural dairy farm, one never knows exactly what an invitation to a Theatre Products event will lead to.

For their last collection ‘Boutique’, friends were invited to Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi department store where we were directed to the theatre on the sixth floor, which happens to be the oldest surviving theatre space in Tokyo and the site where the city’s first fashion show was held.

We were then assigned a team and taken on tours of the legendary building with the resident department store tour guides who told us the history of the site (while Tokyo has been completely annihilated several times with earthquakes, wars, floods and fires, Mitsukoshi has miraculously remained since the seventeenth century) and the architecture (including the thousands of prehistoric fossils embedded in the walls), and led us to a performance at the huge old pipe organ.

Arriving back at the theatre on the sixth floor, we were asked to come on to the stage where we faced out, looking at the empty seats, our invisible audience. Then the designers talked everyone through the collection, piece by piece. Besides several Australiana motifs like a kitschy-cute koala print, a running theme of the collection is the Mitsukoshi depertment store itself:

The designers Akira Takeuchi and Tayuka Nakanishi started collaborating on costume design for theatre in 2000. Wanting to form a label that would treat fashion as theatre, they joined with Kao Kanamori (whose background is in performance) in 2002 and started Theatre Products.

Their aim is to consider clothes not as fixed, pre-existing objects, but as things that are formed only contextually, through the process of being worn. According to them, fashion exists not in physical commodities but in the interactions of bodies, spaces and experiences. To articulate the idea of fashion as live and participatory, their projects have often played with the idea of interactivity – like their installation/shop at Rice Gallery where they built a carnival tent out of pieces of clothing, requiring customers to tear items away from the architectural structure, rendering their act of consumption a performance. The project was launched with a concert by the 17-member horn and percussion band Chanchikitornade, with images of clothing factories projected on the walls.

They have often collaborated with contemporary performing artists and ensembles, including ‘Japan’s smallest magician’ Mame Yamada, and KATHY, the faceless dancers who came to Sydney for Big In Japan last December. They also worked several times with the legendary art director Nagi Noda, creating the 100 identical dresses for this wild clip for J-pop star Yuki.

Top image courtesy Theatre Products, other photos by Amelia Groom.

An old children’s harlequin costume hangs in the corner of Yoshikazu Yamagata’s central Tokyo studio. A shade of golden yellow that is both brilliant and aged, it hovers over us like a ghost, a memory of exuberance withered by time’s fatal passing. The designer tells me that when he found it as a wide-eyed 19-year-old at Portobello Road Market it stopped him in his tracks and made him wonder if one day he could make clothes like that. Eleven years have passed and he says he has always hung it wherever he has worked as a reminder of why he was first drawn to fashion.

After graduating from women’s wear at Central St Martins in London, Yoshi worked for labels including Ann-Sofie Back, McQUEEN, Kei Kagami and John Galliano before forming writtenafterwards with Kentaro Tamai in 2005. The first show they did was The Everyone’s New Clothes (above), a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen on his 200th anniversary, and since then the tragic-comic duality of the faded yellow harlequin ensemble has been manifest in every collection.

According to Yoshi, he had never been good at verbal communication and always struggled to connect with other kids at school, but he discovered fashion as a mode of expression and exchange. Clothing exists next to the body as the most immediate means of communication between people, and writtenafterwards was founded on the notion of fashion as interaction.

It is fitting, then, that collaboration has always been such a major part of the label’s ethos. In 2007 Yoshi joined forces with the knit artist mafuyu on the My Town In My Home collection of wearable houses that could double as children’s toys (above), and he has done joint projects with the likes of designer Hedi Slamane (see here), photographer Naoki Honjo (below) and children’s picture book publisher elaelaopa. “I don’t want one designer, I want a community,” he says. “Ideally we will introduce secondary writtenafterwards lines from other designers, to foster more exchange.”

For the last five years Yoshi has also been focusing on teaching in the small fashion school he established, Coconogako. Unsatisfied with the current system of fashion education, he believes a teacher should be a collaborator, “not an old man talking to a young man, as the Japanese hierarchy structure dictates”. Countering the façade of exclusivity that usually plagues fashion, Coconogako admits school kids, young professionals and grandparents alike to create a dynamic and inclusive design/education system for exploring the possibilities of fashion and how it can be defined.

With a policy of accepting every idea that is proposed to him Yoshi says being a teacher can at times be overwhelming and difficult to balance with running his own label, but it is an integral part of his work as a designer. “I want to be as open as Bruno Munari,” he says, citing the Italian designer, teacher, inventor, artist, researcher and children’s book author as a major source of inspiration, and a reminder that teaching has been a vital part of the creative process for many of the world’s best designers. Yoshi’s favourite collection for writtenafterwards has been the 0-Points project he did last year in collaboration with the students at his college (see above). “Fashion comes from young people,” he says, “you have to always be open to the untrained.”

Taking the name from the music/poetry reading nights he was running at the time, Masahiro Tobita formed the label Spoken Words Project twelve years ago. The 2010 AW collection Psycho – Rough Ground was unveiled last week at Vacant in Harajuku where we ate mini frankfurts and Japanese pickles amongst ladders before the designer and his team dressed some models in ever-evolving layers pulled out of cardboard boxes scattered around the room. Tobita, who had studied textile dying and weaving at Tama Art University in Tokyo before training himself in clothesmaking, is known for his excellent graphics, colours and cuts, as well as his art practice in painting and sculpture. The collection is now also on show in the gallery room of the wonderful Utrecht art bookshop.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

Masks by Yoshikazu Yamagata of writtenafterwards photographed by Hedi Slimane for Dazed & Confused Japan.

As fashion week wraps up in Paris, eyeball the AW10 collections by the big-gun Japanese designers who presented, starting with delectable stuffing and padding for Comme des Garçons, harking back to Rei Kawakubo’s controversial ‘lumps and bumps’ collection of 1997…

More clean lines and flawless tailoring by Yohji Yamamoto …

Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake collaborated with the revolutionary mathematician William Thurston to create a collection inspired by his geometric models for the shape of the universe …

Comme des Garçons protégé Junya Watanabe married romance with combat …

And, Tsumori Chisato’s impossibly pretty gypsy circus …

Images courtesy style.com

Last year Dr Gene Sherman (Director of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation) donated a 62-piece collection of her own clothing and accessories by Japanese designers – primarily Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto – to Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Until March 14 a small selection of the archive is on display at the Lake Macquarie  Arts Centre, showing simultaneously with the Powerhouse Museum’s FRUiTS! Tokyo Street Style exhibition. The text below is taken from the catalogue essay written by me.

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows)

Japan has always been poised to show the rest of the world the allure of shadows and blackness; to remind us that as stars cannot be seen in the day, it is darkness that gives form to light. Just as the excessively golden and ornate age of Rococo gave way to the European infatuation with the understated blackness of Japanese shikki (lacquerware), the bright colours and showy glamour of fashion in the West in the mid 1980s was shaken up by the sombre, achromatic pallet for which Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yōji Yamamoto first became famous.

They proposed a radically new (but also, as I will suggest here, age-old) aesthetic that emphasised form, line, texture and tactility over colour; the focus being on sculptural shapes that alter the natural silhouette of the body. It is this quality that first drew Gene Sherman to their designs, and besides a handful of isolated examples, the 62-piece collection that was recently donated to the Powerhouse Museum is predominantly black, with some scatterings of dark navies and charcoals.

The exhibition includes a video installation showing a demonstration of Issey Miyake’s A-POC  line at the Powerhouse Museum in 2005.

In Japan, kuro (black) has long symbolised nobility and experience, as in the karate black belt. Of course, it is a mistake to think there is only one black: as sumi-e (Japanese ink paintings) show us, there are endless possibilities of tones and textures within blackness. Kawakubo is often quoted as saying “I work in three shades of black”, and while she introduced bright colours and prints in later collections she has – like her early partner Yamamoto and their predecessor of several years, Mikaye – continued to explore the ambiguity, inconspicuousness and melancholy of blackness.

Written in the early 1930’s, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows suggested that while Westerners have worshipped light in the name of progress and clarity, the Japanese have preferred the uncertainty and mysterious allure of shadows, training the eye to adapt to the dark so as to discover what lies within it.

Blackness holds possibility, and is related to the more general austerity of Japanese beauty that is continued by these designers through their pure geometric forms with minimal embellishment. Related to this is the elusive ideal of wabi sabi, probably the most characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese aesthetics. An appreciation of imperfection, irregularity, impermanence and incompletion, this wabi sabi is found in the blackness, modesty, simplicity of lines, asymmetrically and raw finishings of Kawakubo, Miyake and Yamamoto’s clothes.

While often talked about as groundbreaking, these three designers in fact have posses great reverence for Japan’s cultural heritage and artistic traditions. At different times and to varying degrees, each of them has reverted back to elements of their country’s indigenous dress, such as the Yōji Yamamoto black evening coat with kimono sleeves that is on display as part of the Gene Sherman collection.

The basic adult kimono (ki mono meaning ‘a thing to wear’) comes in two sizes – man and woman – and has never deviated from its basic, untailored T shape. Rather than emphasizing the human form and striving for the ideal figure, as Western dress has done, the kimono has its own shape and structure that is independent of the individual wearer. It retains its own basic geometric form with little regard for the body’s biological contours, and contemporary Japanese fashion retains this principal.

Where’s the body? The oversized / layered look that caused a sensation when it was first presented by these Japanese designers on Paris runways in the 1980s is reminiscent of the jūnihitoe, a heavy and complex twelve layered robe worn by Japanese court women which virtually swallowed their bodies into oblivion. Above: Empress Nagako in jūnihitoe (1926) and Comme des Garçons AW2009.

Accumulated by Dr Sherman over two decades, this extensive and idiosyncratic archive reminds us that while Japan’s national dress has largely been replaced with modern ‘Western’ styles, contemporary Japanese fashion remains bound up with highly refined traditional values and techniques.

Remarkably, none of the collection – which goes back as early as 1989 – has dated in the least. Disregarding seasonal trends in favour of a more singular vision that continues ancestral thinking, the designers have defied the fashion industry’s emphasis on being in fashion while remaining very much at the cutting edge of ideas. In this way, the design houses of Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yōji Yamamoto, along with those of their peers and successors, are continuing to lead fashion into the future while borrowing from the shadows of their culture’s past.

Issey Miyake limited edition Pleats Please Guest Artist dress designed by the Japanese self portraiture / drag artist Yasumasa Morimura, 1996. Gift to the Powerhouse Museum from Dr Gene Sherman, 2009.

Lica and Naka met in the early 90s when they were at art school together in Osaka. They launched their first fashion label 20471120 (the name referring to the date when Naka believes “something will happen”) in 1994, establishing boutiques in Tokyo and Osaka the next year and quickly developing a cult following amongst Japan’s flourishing street fashion scene.

By 2000 they were experimenting more and more with reused clothing and embarked on a new venture called Tokyo Recycle Project. During fashion week in Tokyo that year, instead of putting on a show they sent empty cardboard boxes to all the local fashion journalists, with a note inside requesting they send them back a garment from their wardrobe which they no longer wore. After gathering information from each person about their lives and their memories of the clothes they had sent, the designers set about deconstructing and reassembling all the garments they had received, making them into new, more desirable pieces to return to their owners.

The project caused quite a stir in Japan and the designers soon found themselves set up with a Tokyo Recycle Project centre in Harajuku, where anyone could come to see them with their old unwanted clothes and have them remade into something new on site. It was read as a critique of Tokyo’s hyper-consumerist culture, and it encouraged people to form more meaningful relationships with their material belongings, something which Lica and Naka believe is lacking in contemporary life.

In 2001 the pair presented a Tokyo Recycle Project collection based on the reuse of pre-existing garments from UNIQLO (the Japanese mega-brand specializing in cheap mass produced clothing), including a dramatic red dress which was assembled live on their model, as a performance piece (see last image below). Shortly after, they embarked on a trip along the Silk Road from Italy to Kyrgystan, making exchanges for used clothes along the way and eventually releasing a special collection called Silk Road Remix Recycle.

In recent years they launched Zechia, a more orthodox fashion label which still retains the irreverent spirit of Tokyo Recycle Porject and 20471120. Lica (who is also a licensed aromatherapist and has worked as a chief designer at Cacharel) does most of the designing while Naka (who is a practicing artist – some examples of his work above) looks after their graphics and related art projects.

For Spring/Summer 2010 they started the new eco sister line Zechia Hearty, which was shown a few weeks ago at Japan Fashion Week. Using organic and recycled cottons, it features T-shirts embellished with simple messages like “Love Family” and “Keep The Earth” or Naka’s hand-drawn graphics of endangered and extinct species. The duo appeared utterly free of cynicism as they humbly explained to me that they continue to see fashion as offering an unparalleled opportunity to communicate a message, and to change the way people live their lives.

Naka (Masahiro Nakagawa) has a solo exhibition at Gallery Venue in  Denmark next year, including works from the Tokyo Recycle Porject and 20471120 archives.

T-shirts from the new Zechia Hearty line (Spring/Summer 2010).

Tokyo Recycle Project fashion show at The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2005).

Tokyo Recycle Project dress assembled from pre-existing synthetic UNIQLO garments (Spring/Summer 2001).

Bringing together two of Japan’s most visionary and free spirited women, an installation from SANAA’s Kazuyo Sejima for Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons has opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The spacial design by Sejima is reminiscent of the instillation that was held at SCAF Gallery in Sydney earlier this year, but the experience of the curved and subtly reflective space with Rei Kawakubo’s extraordinary shapes and colours floating throughout is overwhelmingly beautiful. The clothes cease to exist as individual garments and become unified as parts of one work, the full effect of which is best experienced from above, on ether side of the museum’s upper level.

The show makes evident many similarities between the architect and the designer; while Kawakubo shocked the fashion world in the 80s when she presented collections that showed complete disregard for things as fundamental to fashion as finished seams and hems, Sejima is well known for radically reconsidering accepted notions of space and built environments, also demanding thought and participation from anyone who experiences her work.

Separate to the installation there is a section dedicated to the artful interplay between two dimensionality and three dimensionality in Kawakubo’s work. Displaying garments on mannequins alongside photographs of the same garments removed from the body and laid flat, viewers can see how the clothes completely change form when they are on the body. The are virtually unrecognisable in the photographs, reminding us how closely aligned Kawakubo’s work is to the realms of sculpture and architecture.

The special exhibition is part of a larger fashion show at MOT from Kyoto Costume Institute called Luxury Reconsidered. Looking at society’s changing ideas about the meaning and purpose of luxury in fashion, it examines different cultural and historical perspectives including ostentatious luxury, the luxury of simplicity and more personal or intellectual luxury (which is where Comme des Garçons fits in). The exhibition continues until January 2010.

Photos by Amelia Groom

To call it understatement would be an understatement. The Cosmic Wonder headquarters in Tokyo is a supremely minimalist space in the back streets of Aoyama, where everything is perfect and perfectly placed. While it houses their men’s and women’s lines, they’ve overcome the predicament of cluttered display with a technique of ‘non-display’: putting all items behind the white walls. Said white walls are opened up for visitors who are deemed worthy, and the centre also houses their artworks and flawlessly designed publications. On display until the end of this week are original prints from their Cosmic Wonder Free Press Sunday Edition for the current Light Source collection (see below), featuring photographers Laetitia Benat, Takashi Homma, Henry Roy and Mark Borthwick.

A selection of Cosmic Wonder Light Source and Cosmic Wonder Free Press are available in Australia from Via Alley.

There were a few askance glances at fur fur where designer Aya Furuhashi celebrated making a real mess of things, but it was once of the most enjoyable shows of the week. Furuhashi started FUR as a project for “hand-made one offs and action-painting” in 2005, launching it as an independent fashion label the following year. In 2008 the brand name was changed to fur fur and they have quickly established themselves as a favourite amongst Tokyo’s more progressive fashionistas.

A few other highlights from JFW I haven’t already mentioned …

Lots of blue and green with no colours in between at matohu.

White light from the self-trained Junya Tashiro

Bare feet and strong silhouettes at jazzkatze

Menswear included the masculine lace and trimmings from new label ODRADEK (above), and preppy sophstication from HEATH (below).

In other news, a fascinating exhibition of samurai art and armour has just opened at Gallery Shingendo, showing some interesting parallels with the elaborate layering, bold colouring and sculptural forms of contemporary Japanese fashion. I am in love with this ensemble and feel it would be equally suitable for fighting battles in the mountains and drinking strawberry milkshakes in Harajuku, and therefore perfect for my lifestyle.

[Samurai image courtesy Gallery Shingendo. Runway images courtesy Japan Fashion Week Organization]

There are those who would say ‘The Fashion Show of The Gods’ might be an ambitious thing to call your own fashion show – but the smoke, Nico Muhly soundtrack and senior men in volumes of white fabric and hair had us all convinced last night at writtenafterwards.

‘Travelling back in time, when the gods were holding the very first fashion show for the world’s kingdom inhabited only by animals.’ That was apparently the concept behind it all, and it made for a memorable and somewhat hilarious closing show for Japan Fashion Week.

It was held on the sports court of the Taito Designers Village, where the innovative and ever-playful label had also set up a beautiful instillation featuring a miniature scene of animals watching the gods on the runway, as well as lace globes and globe bags …

Photos by Amelia Groom.

Yesterday the BBC reported a new tiny dinosaur species had been identified from fossilised remains, measuring 4 inches in height. Go science! Meanwhile in parallel Tokyo fashion world the young label Tiny Dinosaur unearthed their SS10 collection ‘dreamtime’ in a somewhat tiny space just off Omotesando. We were invited to peer into a temporary bedroom setting where we saw some beautiful tailoring, shirts-turn-skirts, and boots with toes.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

The knitwear mastermind Keiichi Muramatsu unveiled his ‘Colour Theif’ collection for everlasting sprout last night, under a suspended web of white garments waiting for stolen colours. With lots of fluffy pompoms and impossibly pretty detailing it was an uplifting (in every sense of the word) show that confirmed everlasting sprout’s status as one of Japan’s most exciting up-and-coming labels.

With an emphasis on DIY they not only sell their readymade garments but offer kits with the instructions and materials for consumers to come up with their own creations, and in the same spirit they hold regular workshops around Tokyo to disseminate the joys of needlecraft (like the ones they are hosting today and tomorrow at Takashimaya in Shinjuku). This focus on the sharing of ideas counters the culture of exclusivity that so often pervades in the fashion industry – all the more reason to give everlasting sprout everlasting love.

[Runway photos © Japan Fashion Week Organization]

Japan Fashion Week has just kicked off, amidst interesting circumstances. The industry’s continuing struggles came to a head a fortnight ago when one of J-fashion’s biggest heroes, Yohji Yamamoto, filed for bankruptcy (with company debts exceeding US$64 million). It came as a shock to many, but was only the latest in a series of blows.

Late last year, for example, as Japan’s high end fashion market drastically dwindled, Louis Vuitton announced it had cancelled its plans to open a new (much hyped) 12-story store in Ginza; and just last week Versace declared it would close all its Japanese stores.

Once the home of thousand dollar melons and Hermès accessories for dogs, Japan’s status as having the world’s most avid luxury shoppers – often been cited as the land where a whopping forty per cent of the world’s luxury fashion has been consumed – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Meanwhile business is up-and-up for cheap franchise clothing stores like Uniqlo and H&M, and the trend towards second hand clothes continues to grow with chains like Rag Tag (recycled designer wear) and Hanjiro (super cheap vintage and used clothes) opening new outlets left, right and centre.

So what does it all mean for Japan’s young fashion designers? Just two days in to fashion week and it’s apparent they remain full of ideas, energy and optimism. Highlihts so far include the toxic waste mutants of Toshikazu Iwaya’s Dress 33 line  who were decked out in sickly synthetic colours and textures with Gaultier-esque exuberance…

Lots of custom-embellished Asics bike pants for men from Dress 33.

Also a favourite, mintdesigns presented another breath of minty fresh air at an off-site show, this time in the gorgeous al fresco surrounds of the historic Tokyo National Museum at dusk. The brainchild of Nao Yagi and Hokuto Katsui, mintdesigns seems to embody all the best of Japanese fashion: originality, humour and socks, really really great socks …

Another highlight has been THEATRE PRODUCTS who presented their latest eclectic and eccentric ensembles at Vacant in Harajuku last night. Basing their brand’s philosophy on the pursuit of theatre within daily life, Akira Takeuchi and Tayuka Nakanishi’s original vision and ongoing collaborations across various fields of visual art, design and performance have earned them a devoted following …

Tributes to Bombay Sapphire ran throughout the THEATRE PRODUCTS show, as we sipped on their gin cocktails.

So today’s lesson is that the death of luxury is not the death of fashion. The industry is redefining itself and as the Japanese turn their backs on the frenzied consumption of handbags that require mortgages, it’s exciting to see a new generation of designers for whom the aspiration of luxury is irrelevant.

On a final note, all of this makes an interesting context for the new fashion exhibition Luxury Reconsidered, to be opening shortly at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Examining luxury and fashion in light of our changing times, it will feature around 100 garments from the collection of The Kyoto Costume Institute (as well as a special instillation from Comme des Garçons and SANAA! More on that soon).

Photos by Amelia Groom.

A few years ago a certain mademoiselle named Yulia stated popping up more and more frequently on the Tokyo electro scene and in the street fashion press like FRUiTS. Her perfect blue or purple bob is now ubiquitous, and she has found herself with a menagerie of job titles … Between recording and doing live DJ/MC/singing performances, running her accessory label GIZA, writing for her blog Honeyee and her column in NYLON Japan, VJing on her TV show

Madomoworld and generally making the scene on Tokyo’s underground club circuit, Mademoiselle Yulia will be joining us for a live performance at our Big In Japan event in December, and she kindly took the time out for a quick Q&A …

How is the Japanese fashion culture unique?

There are quite a few, including myself, who are affected by New York. I think that Japanese fashion is very hybrid, mixed

with various cultures including the Japanese one. Interest in fashion is very high, and in this sense we should be aware of style when walking in Tokyo’s streets.

How would you describe your own style?

Hmm… I just wear whatever I want. Most important to me is that I enjoy the clothes I am wearing.

What is your favourite Japanese label?

Comme des Garcons

Your favorite place to shop in Tokyo?

Faline Tokyo

And your favourite club?

Trump Room

What are you working on at the moment?

I just put out my second mix tape NEON SPREAD 2 featuring my original track Touch Me, and I’m coming to Sydney to party with you guys in December!

For his AW09 collection Elizabeth or Spain, Dress 33 designer Toshikazu Iwaya sampled elements from Elizabethan England (remembered as the Golden Age of England, 1558–1603) and the height of the Spanish Empire (Spain’s so-called Golden Age, 1521–1643).

Living up to his reputation for high theatricality and gorgeous colouration he combined stylised Elizabethan collars and Spanish conquistador uniform tailoring. But with make up inspired by kabuki theatre, millinery creations reminiscent of strange deep-sea creatures and sci-fi accessories including sunglasses that covered the entire forehead, it was more than a simple blending of two European Golden Ages.

If you’re in Tokyo you can see the collection for yourself – the first Dress 33 flagship show recently opened at 5-5-4 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-Ku.

With their mind-boggling tailoring and cute cute cuteness, designer Eri Utsugi’s clothes are surprisingly laidback and wearable when they’re off the runway (basketball-sized fur mittens optional of course). She launched her mercibeaucoup label in 2006 with the brand concept “with pureness, with fun, with beauty, mercibeaucoup” and has gained quite a following for her colourful and conceptual creations that mirror Tokyo’s street fashion culture. Our friends at Via Alley have just brought in a small selection of pieces from the AW09/10 butterfly-themed collection (see below). Here’s hoping this is the beginning of the end of Australia’s deprivation of amazing young Japanese fashion labels. Maybe before too long people will be lighting up our streets and our imaginations by wearing getup like this …

Nagi Noda’s death on September 7 2008 robbed the world of an unbridled imagination that fed on surrealist pop and hilarious, super-kawaii fantasy. Lest we forget. Not that we could even if we wanted to: everything she touched became infused with her idiosyncratic, candy-coloured exuberance, leaving a vivid impression on all who were exposed to her work.

A film director, graphic designer, toy maker, art director and fashion designer, Nagi was born in Tokyo and spent 5 years in New York before returning to Japan in ‘87. She worked as a multi-disciplinary new media artist for various projects and exhibitions; created ad campaigns for clients including the La Foret department store in Harajuku, Nike and Coca Cola; started a fashion label with artist Mark Ryden, made countless music videos for the likes of Cut/Copy, Scissor Sisters and Japanese pop star Yuki, and made the amazing hair hats pictured below.

Her passing at age 35 was apparently due to complications from surgery she had after a car accident the year before. Sheila Stepanek, CEO of her agency Partizan, reported that the she died “in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots and perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes.”

Hidenobu Yasui is more comfortable with the term ‘shokunin’ (traditional Japanese craftsperson) than ‘fashion designer’. After graduating from Central Saint Martins he set up a label in London, but soon found himself drawn back to his homeland where he eagerly embraced traditional Japanese textiles and techniques. “When I produce my work as a Japanese shokunin I am passionate about opening up new ways to perceive the world with sense of Japanese beauty, honour and sensitivity that are passed on from the past,” he says. Incorporating high-quality natural fibres, refined tailoring processes, neutral tones and sculptural forms, he produces gender ambiguous clothing that aims to “bring the focused strength and delicate beauty that arises from the ephemeral.” Shokunin or fashion designer, we are official fans.

So we haven’t done a rap about our love for Rei Kawakobu but that doesn’t mean there’s not an abundance of love (and rapping skills) here. Not only has she revoutionised fashion with her eccentric and uncompromising vision, she’s nurtured a whole new generation of designers under her mummy wings. Another Kawakobu protégé, Nozomi Ishiguro worked as a design assistant for Junya Watanabe at Comme des Garçons for 12 years before forming his own label in 1998. The simple philosophy behind Nozomi Ishiguro Haute Couture is “there is no such thing as going too far” and his designs are always reaching new heights of vivid exuberance and hilarity. Do I feel a rap coming on?

Tokyo, August 3. High up on the 5th floor of Shibuya store Cannabis. The ksubi collective have erected a bright blue, plastic home away from home. Inspired by the hand built shelters of the homeless people of Tokyo’s streets, the installation Home honey, I’m hi! reflects both the Japanese obsession for material comforts and our desire for a simpler hassle-free existence. Post exhibition, the installation became ksubi’s first “pop n shop” pop up store.

“But you are still thinking in terms of a life with a real face. The mask does not deceive and is not deceived. How about putting on a new mask, turning over a new leaf, and starting another life?”

(Kobo Abe, The Face of Another)

A look back at a look book from 2006, marking the first collection from Fugahum; a fashion label which frequently crosses over into the realms of  visual art and  instillation.

After 6 years as a designer with Yohji Yamamoto, Asuka Yamamoto formed Fugahum with Akiyoshi Mishima, an artist, art director, graphic designer, film director and VJ. Their work together is based on the notion of a fictional nation named ‘Fugahum’, and their aesthetic nestles somehwere at the boarders of street and fantasy; gothic and futuristic; macarbe and beautiful. An interview with Mishima (whose paintings feature here) about his work and the Fugahum nation can be found here.

In the traditional, highly refined Japanese artform of banraku puppetry, the three men required to manipulate each puppet are in clear view to the audience. Because the art and the labour are exhibited simultaneously, the artiface of it because an integral part of the performance rather than something to disguise. In a similar way, Dolls makes no attempt to appear natural and is self-conciously highly constructed and stylised.

An ode to the unique form of pupperty, the film opens with a beautiful sequence of a banraku performance and then proceeds to tell three different stories of undying love, the most visually enticing of which is the tale of the young lovers bound by a red chord who roam the changing country side throughout Japan’s four distinct seasons.

It is in these chapters where the film’s designer Yohji Yamamoto really goes all out with his conceptual costumes, creating a surreal and vibrantly colourful world that is untainted by verbal dialogue or other earthly ties. By the end of their long journey the troubled lovers take on the gorgeous traditional kimonos originally worn by the bunraku puppets in the opening sequence, further emphasising their existence as mere ‘dolls’ enacting a well-known love story at the hands of a puppeteer who is manipulating their every move.

While a costume designer usually works within set boundaries of the film to find the most suitable dress for pre-conceived characters, in this case it was evidently the other way around. “We had to adjust locations and stories to match his costumes,” says director Takeshi Kitano, and the aesthetic created by  Yamamoto’s creations is really what gives this strange film its distinct mood.

Risa Nakazawa works as an artist coordinator and marketing manager for GAS Japan. As a company, GAS does so many things that we feel slightly dizzy writing them down. Through the GASBOOKS publishing arm, CALM & PUNK GALLERY and 20,000,000 fragments (20MF) fashion label, GAS provides a platform for artists all over the world to showcase their work to a wider audience. Recently, GAS also started workshops that connect kids with artists to hopefully “make world little bit happier with the creative mind-set”. Risa took time out to chat briefly with us about the latest GAS projects…

What are the focuses for GAS this year?

One of our biggest projects this year is with UNIQLO, the largest fashion apparel company in Japan. We’ve been licensing graphics and projects to them for few years now, but this year the relationship has grown even stronger. (Watch this space!) 20MF is another big project for GAS, as we started the distribution of our collection in Australia this year through Via Alley. Finally, our own t-shirt brand, GASBOOK tee, is growing in popularity all over the world. We already send tees to Asia and Oceania, but this year we’re hitting Europe too. We are also planning to launch a website so that consumers can directly purchase tees, because we are only selling through retailers at the moment.

Calm & Punk Gallery

Can you tell us a bit about the vision for 20MF this season?

The concept of 20MF this season is “fabricated with touch of antique”. Tamami Akiyama, the designer of 20MF, has taken up the challenge to create new silhouettes with respect to traditional tailoring techniques. She wants each garment to live a long life; to be passed on over generations.

Has Tamami been working with anyone to create this aesthetic?

For the past two seasons 20MF has worked closely with Australian artist Jonathan Zawada. Jonathan’s work is always beyond our expectations; it’s highly original and very delicate.

Jonathan Zawada for 20MF

You also run CALM & PUNK GALLERY, what have you got coming up?

We are very excited to be releasing our new book series, CALM & PUNK BOOKS. This series was recently established by representative director of GAS / CALM & PUNK GALLERY, Shinjiro Nishino. The first release features Japanese pixel designer ten_do_ten. The book will be released July 21 and CALM & PUNK GALLERY will also host an art show to celebrate the launch.

Can you tell us a little more about ten_do_ten?

Of course! ten_do_ten uses pixels as his form of graphic expression. He started as a solo artist in 2001 and has worked on numerous projects including record sleeve designs, book covers, web design and mobile phone interfaces. His work is so original, it imprints itself on your memory!

ten_do_ten book for GAS

Created by Taku Satoh Design Office, this campaign for Issey Mikaye’s latest Pleats Please collection is giving us hungry eyes …

For more yummy Miyake, check out the Gene Sherman Contemporary Japanese Fashion Collection on show until August 7 at the Powerhouse Museum.

Between ‘96 and ‘98 Miyake invited four artists to collaborate with him for his Pleats Please Guest Artist Series – Yasumasa Morimura, Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson and Cai Guo-Qiang. This dress is the result of Morimura’s efforts …

Dress by Yasumasa Morimura for Pleats Please Issey Miyake, 1996. Gift to the Powerhouse Museum from Dr Gene Sherman, 2009

After graduating from Bunka Fashion College in Knit Design, Keiichi Muramatsu worked for Italian yarn manufacturer Lineapiu. He returned to Japan and founded Everlasting Sprout with Noriko Seki in 2005. With a focus on colour, texture and layering, their unbridled imagination and optimism makes their spun yarn creations utterly free of cynicism. As Muramatsu, says, ‘We want to produce things with the sense of reaching toward hope like sprouts grow toward sunlight.’

Get your geometry sets out: function follows form in these sculptural garments by Anrealage. With utter disregard for the contours of the human body, designer Kunihiko Morinaga has based his last few seasons on the most elemental of shapes: spheres, cubes, prisms and pyramids.

He says their focus is on ordinary, everyday life – and with such an avant gade approach to design, the garments are surprisingly wearable and utilitarian. The subdued colours allow for the focus to be primarily on the architectural forms, and the collection marks a departure from the vibrant exuberance of his earlier work …