While LesMads and Mary are enjoying the Fashion Week in New York we were fortunate enough to be in Tokyo while the 7th Japan Fashion Week was going on in the city. While it is only a few days in Berlin, here in Tokyo it is almost 2 weeks long. In the first week a lot of Japanese designers had their shows, along with some bigger fashion events. In the following week there is an exhibition with a selection of designers which must be somewhat the equivilant to the Premium trade show here.
Last Saturday we had the chance to see one of the bigger events of the Fashion Week. The New Designer Fashion Grand Prix had its 25th birthday this year. 30 designers from all over the world (mostly from Asia, though) presented a unique design and it all felt a bit like a very glamorous episode of Project Runway, only without Heidi Klum. Read on for more insights and photos of the contestant’s designs.
During the show 20 female and 10 male designs were presented. Each design opened with a projection of the sketch that the designers submitted to enter the contest. Among thousands of submissions they selected those 30 that actually went into production of a show piece. Some of the female designs were really great and most of them were fun to look at. The male entries were not so exciting though, we only liked a few of them.
The winner for best female was a designer from Thailand, second place went to South Korea and best male was from Japan. My favorite design which is the opener of the article only won in a secondary category.
The jury consisted of several designers and fashion industry professionals. One of them was the German designer Bernhard Wilhelm who had a really outgoing outfit but was actually quite shy on stage.
You can see more photos of the winning designs and the event in our flickr album.
We would have loved to see the designer’s exhibition next week, but unfortunately we left Tokyo today and headed back to Korea. We’ll post some more fashion impressions of Japan in the following days, so stay tuned!
