Tokyo Fashion Week has a sprawl problem. A significant number of the city’s homegrown designers have taken to showing off-schedule, with more than 10 brands holding runway shows and presentations on seemingly random days throughout January and February.
For these designers, going off-schedule is a matter of getting in front of the money before it’s gone. Post-Paris, buyers’ budgets will have already been squeezed; to get an edge in the global market, Japanese brands need to make sure they aren’t last in line.
Fashion week in the Japanese capital now, as a result, feels amorphous. The change marks a significant challenge for the official Rakuten-sponsored Tokyo Fashion Week, which is set to take place from March 16-21 this season. Japan Fashion Week Organization (JFWO) first pushed the event back last year due to changes in the international fashion week schedule, the ramifications of which are now appearing.
There are 33 designers on the main schedule, compared to last year’s 37 (this is padded out by the annual Tokyo Fashion Award — the eight winners must show during the Autumn/Winter season as part of the prize). There are fewer big-draw names, however, breakout stars who have fled the main schedule include streetwise menswear brand Kamiya, knitwear label Pillings, and womenswear brand Fetico, diluting the impact of the main week. As a result, an identity crisis is brewing for Tokyo Fashion Week. How will it adapt if its main talents leave?
Increasingly competitive production schedules
Production scheduling challenges are the main reason brands are shifting their shows back and breaking away from the main fashion week, with brands competing for an ever-decreasing number of factories, which creates a production bottleneck. Due to Japan’s aging population and declining population, especially in rural areas, designers report that there are fewer and fewer factories to accept their orders each year. “Recently, good factories and fabric makers are limited, so the earlier they can do it, the better,” says Hirofumi Kurino, co-founder of United Arrows.
“If everything was in one week and all the designers showed together, of course, it would be more convenient for the journalists or buyers, but at the same time, the production problem is real,” he adds. “It’s best for them to show as fast as they can, otherwise all of the designers are rushing into the same factory in the same period.”
“I initially intended to hold the show during the main Tokyo collections as usual, but the production schedule made it difficult so I had to move it up,” says Ryota Murakami, the designer behind off-kilter knitwear brand Pillings, whose February runway show was an early highlight of the season. The brand has been steadily gathering momentum among press and buyers and was shortlisted for last year’s LVMH Prize.
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