Tokyo Fashion Week doesn’t officially kick off until March 16, but many of the city’s biggest and brightest designers have broken away from the main schedule and are showing scattershot throughout February, mostly citing production logistics. The takeaway: it’s always fashion week in Tokyo.
First out of the gate is Fetico.
Emi Funayama’s brand of sultriness has been building momentum as one of Japan’s womenswear brands to watch, and is entering a new phase of maturity. The designer, who turns 40 this year, had been mulling over what it means to grow up gracefully, and titled this outing ‘Contours of Grace.’ “It’s been five years since I started the brand and I’ve become an adult, so I was also conscious of creating clothes to appeal to more mature women,” she said during the backstage press scrum.
This season she took a powerful trio of women as her jumping off point: painter Vanessa Bell, model-turned-war correspondent Lee Miller, and Gabrielle Chanel, a triumvirate of freethinkers responsible for shaping femininity in the 20th century and beyond. Their influence appeared variously throughout: in the military coats and suiting, the fuzzy tweed sets, and the ruched negligee blouses, worn by a consummately cast roster of age-diverse models. “I wanted to show a more realistic image of women wearing Fetico,” said Funayama.
Hemlines were modest, but subtle hallmarks of Fetico eroticism were reliably woven throughout: sailor pants laced up like corsets at the back, rose-print velvet suiting and dresses were cinched at the waist, while front-ruched pencil skirts hugged the hips. Particularly captivating were the many-pleated trousers that swished over the concrete floor of Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
From the pillbox hats down to the mary jane pumps, the collection carried a soft, old-world glamour that Funayama toughened up (and crucially modernized) with texture in the denim and leather pieces. A standout leather jacket was sensually sculpted with princess seams: convincingly sexy at any age, but also just right for the moment.