FASHION : 6 Designers Show Spring Collections at Tokyo ‘Summit ‘90’
Six internationally known designers are meeting here this week for Fashion Summit ‘90, a six-day series of shows and a conference presented by Hanae Mori, the most prominent woman in Japanese fashion.
Donna Karan of New York, Claude Montana of Paris, Keith Varty and Alan Cleaver for Byblos of Milan, and Slava Zaitsev of Moscow have joined Mori in presenting their spring collections. All except the press-shy Mori also took part in the daylong conference about fashion in the future.
The summit is the latest of several international fashion weeks that Mori has been host to in Tokyo in the past 10 years. The purpose of the gatherings has always been to make the world’s best designers available to members of the Japanese fashion industry, including manufacturers, retailers and students.
This week’s activities began Monday and took place in a temporary exhibition tent near the Meiji Shrine, a public memorial to Emperor and Empress Meiji. Under golden autumn leaves, the conservatively stylish crowd of about 1,000 people waited quietly for the first show, a group effort, to begin.
During the show, Seiji Ozawa, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, slipped in at the last moment to see his teen-age daughter, Seila, make her modeling debut in a Mori design.
“This is a whole other world to me,” Ozawa said. “I don’t know a thing about fashion.”
Later in the week, the designers presented their collections separately.
“Japan is an isolated country,” said Mori’s son, Akira, who coordinated the summit with John Fairchild, chairman of Fairchild Publications. (For the past 10 years, Fairchild and the Mori family have co-published Women’s Wear Daily Japan, which is patterned after WWD, Fairchild’s U.S. trade publication.)
“We need events like this to bring the best designers in the world to Japan,” Mori said.
So far, all of the designers at Fashion Summit ‘90--except for Zaitsev, who was meeting with potential business partners this week--already do business in Tokyo. Donna Karan has a Tokyo boutique, and Montana’s label is available here. Varty and Cleaver of Byblos said they have just signed a deal to open several boutiques in Tokyo stores.
At the Tuesday conference, the designers took turns addressing the audience. Judging from the warm reception she received, Karan seemed to have the greatest name recognition among the Japanese.
“This trip has been a real eye-opener,” Karan said. “Japanese women are very sophisticated, and they love fashion. I’d like to hear more about their interests. I don’t think I understand them well enough yet.”
Montana, who appeared uncomfortable in front of the crowd, described Japan’s Paris-based designers, especially Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto, as artists. He singled out Yamamoto, saying, “he gave Japanese fashion its color.” (Mori shows her couture and ready-to-wear collections in Paris as well, but she is not part of this younger, avant-garde group.)
When they took the stage, Cleaver and Varty said they have no plans to show their Byblos collection in Paris during the ‘90s, despite the fact that leading names in Italian fashion do. Valentino, Romeo Gigli and Gianni Versace are among those now presented in Paris.
“Milan will remain the center for ready-to-wear fashion because the best fabrics and manufacturing work are from there,” Varty said. As always, he added, “Paris will be the showcase for the avant-garde.”
Fairchild, the summit’s honorary chairman, said he sees Japan’s future in the international fashion community focused on retail stores.
“Yours are some of the most beautiful, chicquest, smartest in the world,” he said. “In America, big department stores are dinosaurs, incapable of generating profit.”
Known for insightful predictions, Fairchild stopped short of saying that Japanese designers will be tomorrow’s fashion leaders. Instead, he said, “I believe the Eastern Bloc countries will soon be a big part of fashion trends.”
Zaitsev has already helped on that front. Several years ago, he made news when he showed a collection in New York. At the time, he was described as a favorite of Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. But rumor has it that she and Zaitsev have since had a falling out.
“It was a myth created by the Western press,” Zaitsev now says of his association with Mrs. Gorbachev, adding, “I don’t need it.”
The fitted suits and narrow coat-dresses that Zaitsev has shown in Tokyo this week are more in tune with Western tastes than were the billowing, layered styles of his New York show. Yet, even he seems to regard himself more as a symbol of perestroika , Gorbachev’s term for the Soviet Union’s social and economic restructuring, than as a creative genius.
“My mission is to open up the secret, mystery world that used to be unknown,” Zaitsev said of his homeland. “Nobody yet believes that Moscow fashion can generate money. But I see no restrictions or limits now on developing that potential.”
Despite the title of the event, the designers never held a dialogue about their concerns and issued no formal proposals. But the simple act of coming together and showing their work in a city foreign to most of them sent a powerful message about Tokyo’s role in the future of fashion.
