Brands to watch at Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo

Breaking away from the traditional axis of Fashion Weeks in Milan, New York, and Paris, Tokyo Fashion Week is held twice a year. Presented by the Japan Fashion Week Organization (JFW Organization), the event takes place in March and August. Thus, every year brands showcase their collections at Shibuya Hikarie and Omotesando Hills, as well as at other locations in Tokyo.

The event started on August 28 and ran until September 2, showcasing the Spring/Summer 2024 collections from 50 brands. Therefore, we decided to highlight some of them for further commentary so that you can follow along. A brief summary of each designer and each brand has been made, along with photos of the looks shown during Fashion Week.

Wilsonkaki

Wilson Yip Ka Ki studied for a master's at Central Saint Martins after graduating from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with a bachelor's degree in knitwear design. He founded the brand in 2021. In less than a year since the brand's establishment, his unique style and brand identity managed to successfully attract the attention of the industry and were acclaimed as one of the 10 Asian Designers to Watch.

Wilsonkaki is a clothing brand that explores everyday common life and reveals people’s social behavior. He draws inspiration from the trivialities of daily life and develops unique, yet wearable pieces, challenging our preconceptions about normality. The designer is skilled at using visual elements to transform ideas into unique styles, through the exploration of reconstruction, interpreting the everyday wardrobe with a hypermodernity approach.

EJ SHEYANG

SHE YANG JIN is a Sino-American fashion designer. In 2019, Jin graduated from Parsons School of Design, specializing in Fashion Design. In 2017, Jin also studied in London at Central Saint Martins in the Fashion Print Pathway course. During her college years, Jin worked with emerging fashion brands like Kozaburo, Feng Chen Wang, and also assisted with Raf Simons’ show at New York Fashion Week. In 2018, Jin was accepted for an internship as a design assistant at Marc Jacobs. In 2020, Jin moved to Japan and established her own eponymous brand, EJ SHEYANG, in 2022.
EJ SHEYANG is a brand that focuses on sustainability and inclusivity, aiming to create clothing suitable for all ages, genders, and races. Utilizing deadstock fabrics (unsold fabrics) and recycling second-hand clothes, the brand is committed to producing pieces that withstand the ever-changing fashion trends, which can also occupy their places in wardrobes and be cherished by their owners for a long time. The designer believes that "nowadays, fast fashion has a significant impact on consumer culture worldwide as well as the environment. To reduce waste, we need to change our consumption habits by buying fewer clothes and products." The brand's effort is directed towards steering the fashion industry towards a more sustainable future.

WIZZARD

Koji Sato studied illustration and graphics at Nippon Design College. After graduating, he studied store management and buying operations at a clothing company in Harajuku. Four years later, he opened a selection store with a friend in Daikanyama and was involved in the buying and management of the store. Two years later, he opened a selection store in Ebisu with the owner, and after 8 years of experience as a buyer, planning, and producing original items for the store, he founded WIZZARD in 2005.

The designer, who has a deep knowledge of music, compares his design work to music mixing and proposes the concept of "RE-MIXING." The style of WIZZARD is about establishing a hybrid urban clothing style of "RE-MIXING" contemporary and real clothes, keeping in mind how to showcase individuality within the realm of "real clothes." The themes of the collections are primarily inspired by music, art, and cinema, and are reflected in the creations through the brand's filter.

HARUNOBUMURATA

Harunobu Murata graduated from Esmod Japon Tokyo. In 2010, Harunobu moved to Italy and enrolled in the Master's Course in Fashion Design at the Marangoni Institute in Milan. In 2012, he became the first Asian to win the Next Generation contest organized by CNMI and showcased his collection at Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2012. After working as a designer at John Richmond, Harunobu joined the design team at Jil Sander in 2015. After returning to Japan in 2018, he launched HARUNOBUMURATA and presented the first collection in Milan.
HARUNOBUMURATA is a luxury fashion brand founded by the designer after his return from Milan, Italy, in 2018. The mission of the brand is to establish a Japanese luxury label using the finest materials and techniques from Italy and Japan, blended with the designer's own sense of experience and history, to provide special emotions for people around the world who love beauty and elegance through encounters with high-level creations.

08sircus

Kiminori Morishita was born in 1964 and began his fashion career in Tokyo. After working as head designer for various brands in a Japanese fashion company,
he launched his own brand "kiminori morishita" and presented his first fashion show in 2003 in Tokyo and in 2007 in Paris. The "kiminori morishita" collection was sold in over 70 major stores in 20 countries.

In January 2009, he founded his own company, "kiminori morishita garments lab inc" and launched a new brand, "08sircus," at the Paris men’s fashion week for Spring/Summer 2010. From 2012, he started the collection for women. From the Fall/Winter 2016-17 collection, he restarted with "kiminori morishita."

RAINMAKER

Kohichi Watanabe was born in 1980 and learned design under the influence of his father, who is a designer of commercial installations. He worked at MORIKAGE SHIRTS KYOTO. He learned about custom tailoring and the design/production of ready-to-wear clothing. In 2008, he presented the men's collection as a designer for N4. He received the TOKYO FASHION AWARD 2019 in 2018.
RAINMAKER, based in Kyoto, was founded in 2012. In the Fall/Winter of 2013, RAINMAKER was launched and the flagship store opened in Muromachi Rokkaku, Kyoto. The flagship store was moved to Muromachi Sanjo, Kyoto, in 2021.

KANAKO SAKAI

Designer SAKAI graduated in prêt-à-porter design teams both in NY and in TOKYO. She established her own eponymous brand, KANAKO SAKAI, in Spring/Summer 2022 in TOKYO.

KANAKO SAKAI is a contemporary fashion brand, founded in 2019 by designer Kanako Sakai. The brand is known for its minimalism and a distinctive selection of materials and color palettes that showcase a wide range of expressions. KANAKO SAKAI is dedicated to showcasing Japan's renowned culture and craftsmanship to the world through its creations.

KAMIYA

Koji Kamiya was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1995. After finishing high school, he began his fashion career in Osaka. Strongly influenced by the fashion culture that mixes vintage/archive items with current items, he started his sales career in a vintage clothing store. Later, he worked under Yasuhiro Mihara and joined the streetwear brand SOSU MYne, forming his own community. He became a director in 2018. He has been developing his designed roots for streetwear with a fashion twist. In 2023, he changed the brand name to KAMIYA.

In 2023, designer KOJI KAMIYA launched the original KAMIYA brand. The designer seeks a vintage style and creates unique pieces that don't belong to any gender, making extensive use of changes in expression represented by distressing processes.

FETICO

After Emi Funayama graduated from high school, she went to England. Funayama returned to Japan and enrolled in Esmod Japan Tokyo, graduating in 2010. After experiencing several collection brands, Funayama founded her own brand, Fetico, in 2020. She won the "JFW NEXT BRAND AWARD 2023" and the "TOKYO FASHION AWARD" in 2022.

FETICO is inspired by classic styles that emphasize the beauty of feminine silhouettes. It reconstructs her aesthetic sense and vision of the body from a unique perspective and designs the unique and new feminine figure by layering contrasting elements. FETICO collections are meticulously produced in collaboration with Japanese textile production regions and artisans. Designs and products are created to be cherished as beautiful vintage clothing over time.