In Arakawa’s case, however, red is the color of angry change. A new generation of Japanese fashion designers are rising up from the country’s shattered economy, and they are confronting the forces of conventional style–and globalization–head-on. Their point of view is iconoclastic, witty and often self-deprecating. Their clothes are mocking and playful, with sleek lines and sometimes asymmetrical cuts. In this era of multitasking, their creations often double as art objects, advertisements or anime cartoons, turning fashion into just another form of multimedia entertainment. They market their product using guerrilla tactics, often attacking large corporations from Uniqlo to Burger King. And they are sparking interest across the globe. “When I go to Paris and London and Milan, everybody is asking what is happening in the Tokyo scene,” says Kazz Yamamuro, executive director for Fashion Television, Japan. “Tokyo fashion is becoming popular again.”
The last time Tokyo fashion was hot, in the 1980s, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons ruled the runways. They embodied Japan’s rising economic and cultural prowess. Their clothes were sleek and sophisticated, yet with traditional Edo accents. They shook up the concept of Western fashion, sometimes literally tearing their clothes as a signal of their entrance into the mainstream. In the heyday of Japan’s bubble, designers like Miyake had the backing of the country’s largest corporations and guaranteed sales from its department-store chains. But since then, in the face of a decade long recession, store chains like Sogo have shut down. The price of clothing has dropped 20 percent. So today’s young designers reflect the new social reality: function is more important than flash, and modesty is moral.
Take Masahiro Nakagawa. The 33-year-old designer’s belief–or marketing pitch–is that the world must be cleansed of the bubble-era mentality that valued purchasing in overabundance. “The purpose of fashion is to heal us,” he says. “There are too many people, too many material goods. Too many stores. Too much in the way of convenience-store values.”
That approach is helping Nakagawa & Co. appeal to young consumers. Today’s fashion designers have to compete not only with each other but also with foreign apparel behemoths like the Gap. On top of that, they have to fight for yen that are increasingly being spent on i-Mode mobile phones and other popular tech goods. Since they generally don’t have the advertising budgets to compete with the big companies, the new designers prefer instead to depict themselves as underground divas. They act as if they don’t care whether they’re successful; they are artistes trying to make a statement about the world. To achieve that, they must create marketing strategies that center as much on a set of themes as on the garments themselves. They create an alternative universe in which the lucky wearer lives. “If the collection is conceptual, it is a lot easier for people to understand and to buy,” says Mariko Nishitani, editor of Japan’s High Fashion magazine.
To that extent, fashion is as much a crusade as a clothing brand. The name of Nakagawa’s company, 20471120, represents the date Nov. 20, 2047, when he believes “something wonderful is going to happen.” His fashions are replete with anime characters he has created to help people evolve a new consciousness: Re-Box Man helps people recycle their souls as well as their goods. Viny, when attached to the body, sucks away negative energy. And Nukegara-kun is the cocoonlike shell of a spiritually reborn being. (He also has a character called Uniqloon that is made up of discarded Uniqlo fabric.) Clearly Nakagawa’s pitch is catching on; recently such international fashion gurus as John Galliano of Christian Dior have been seen buying up clothing inside his Harajuku shop. Nakagawa will exhibit his collection at the New York performance space P.S.1 later this month.
These days it doesn’t even matter whether the clothes are attractive. Unlike their European and American counterparts, many of the new Japanese designers reject outright the idea that fashion has to be glamorous or even elegant. Hiroaki Ohya, 31, believes that in today’s high-speed technological society fashion is merely another information tool. Indeed, Ohya, who worked for four years as a designer for Issey Miyake before beginning his own company, Ohya Design Zoo Co. Ltd., has created several items of clothing that are meant to be read. Two years ago he put out a set of shirts, each designed to look like a different letter of the alphabet. Last year he created “The Wizard of Jeans,” a 21-volume series of books that pop out accordion style into dresses (the series sells for $6,000). He has also begun making clothes that appear as normal garments but fold up to look like fashion magazines. For inspiration Ohya looks to the latest trends in information technology. “I know the Europeans want a new elegance,” he says, “but I’m much more interested in what the next new Macintosh computer will look like.”
Today’s young Japanese designers still owe a great deal to their predecessors. The old guard did the hard work, forcing their way into the world of Western fashion and culture, and opening the door for the new generation’s bold and daring creations. While Rei Kawakubo and friends were busy deconstructing West-ern fashion during the 1980s, designers like Matsumoto Ato simply take it for granted. “There is a big difference between their generation and ours,” says Ato. “They had a complex about Western culture. They wanted to express something that was very Japanese. But we grew up with Western culture. We didn’t notice the difference between West and East.” That’s because it’s slowly disappearing. Whether we like it or not, pretty soon we’ll all be wearing red.
