Designer Sayori Tanaka and creative director Akira Kuboshita are newcomers to Tokyo Fashion Week, but not to the industry. Both are veter ans of the Uniqlo global design team, Tanaka worked for Yohji Yamamoto, and Kuboshita is head of design at Human Made. Their first show on the Tokyo calendar featured a live pianist, bales of cotton and a grid layout that forced the models to chaotically zigzag back and forth across it.
There was also a lot happening with the clothes themselves. While the show opened with a simple pair of raw denim jeans and matching jacket, it quickly gave way to puffer jackets and satin pajama-like sets in mixed scarf prints, oversize wool coats with large check patterns and satin sleeves, and varsity jackets with cutout power shoulders. There were also many full denim looks, whether painted with neon graffiti, adorned with flower appliqués, or coated in a stiff, metallic silver pigment. A quilted blanket worn as a dress and a toga-like piece with a fringed hem only added to the confusion.
While Tanaka and Kuboshita’s offering had an overall air of effortless cool and showed potential, it was also repetitive and would have benefited from a hard edit.
