Many prominent Tokyo-based designers including Fetico, Pillings, Kamiya, and Keisuke Yoshida showed off-schedule ahead of Tokyo Fashion Week this season, largely due to increasingly strict production timelines. As Tokyo Fashion Week drew to a close on Saturday, their absence raised questions about the relevance of the official schedule, and presented a significant challenge for Japan Fashion Week Organization (JFWO) to fill the week with interesting talent.
There were 33 physical shows for Fall/Winter 2026, compared to 32 in FW25 and 25 in SS26, as organizers continue to invest in scaling the event. A raft of new faces from awards, some inventive world-building, and a much larger international presence from both guests and designers brought energy to the week, but its competitive standing as an international showcase remains tentative.
Despite past criticisms that Tokyo was too insular, this was the most international Tokyo Fashion Week in recent memory, with a total of 16 international guests invited by JFWO. Attendees included Manuel Marelli, head of buying at 10 Corso Como Milano; Sunny Luk, associate merchandising director at I.T Hong Kong; and Blake Abbie, editor-in-chief of A Magazine Curated By.
Awards propped up the schedule
To fill the gaps left by off-schedule shows, this season’s Tokyo schedule leaned heavily on awards. The Fall/Winter season is when the eight annual recipients of the Tokyo Fashion Award (TFA) hold a runway show — they are each awarded JPY 1 million yen ($6,300), as well as the chance to hold showrooms during Paris Fashion Week.
“Because of the Tokyo Fashion Award designers, we feel we have lots of energy this season,” says JFWO director Kaoru Imajo. This year’s winners included Kakan Kudo, who showed avant-garde knitwear; Kotoha Yokozawa, who presented an energetic collectsion of bright cutout pieces; and Mukcyen by Yuka Kimura, who closed the week with a strong show of gothic, Marie Antoinette-inspired clothing.
Yoke, the winner of separate award Fashion Prize of Tokyo, opened the week on Sunday night with a showing of elegant womenswear by designer Norio Terada. Yoke also showed menswear off-schedule during Paris Fashion Week in January, with the aim of attracting a more international crowd. The brand added 10 stockists this season, including heavy-hitters like London’s Harrods and Venn Space in New York, bringing its stockist total to 50 domestic and 32 elsewhere. “Until now, even our new stores were mostly up-and-coming, relatively unknown shops, but this time we’ve received a lot of offers from bigger places,” says Terada.
Balancing world-building and wearability
The caveat for TFA winners is that they must show in the main event space on the upper floors of the Shibuya Hikarie, a high-rise mall complex overlooking the city’s iconic Shibuya Crossing. The vast, plain space “creates a limitation for the show that makes it difficult for the designers”, says Hong Kong-based fashion consultant Jonathan Lee. “If they were able to go to a nice gallery or something, I think it would be better for the audience to understand the universe of the brand.”
Some designers rose to the challenge, decorating the mall as part of their world-building: Kotohayokozawa transformed the space into a street with traffic bollards, trees and food trucks, while Yushokobayashi, whose collectsion was inspired the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, created an impressive DIY underworld out of paper flowers and cardboard trees.
Even so, some of the best moments happened outside the Hikarie. A Magazine Curated By’s Abbie was a fan of Mikio Sakabe’s immersive take on a real-life haunted house in Tokyo Bay, scaring press and buyers with models dressed in his kawaii clothing. “I thought that was really fun and different, and something that could not happen in another city,” says Abbie.
Kohei Hashimoto, a buyer for Isetan’s contemporary Restyle section, argues that what we saw in Tokyo this season was more commercially viable than usual. He points out Yohei Ohno, another TFA winner, who made elegant-looking sweaters that twisted at the chest, and shirts with extra sleeves at the front, as an example of balancing commerce and creativity. “If the material was unusual, then the shape was normal, and if the shape was really unusual, the material was normal,” says Hashimoto. “[Ohno] created an entry point [for consumers] and it felt like a great update to his work.”
Luk from I.T also noted the wearability. “The product from Japanese brands is very wearable compared to more flashy European brands, and usually their sell-through is better,” he says, adding that with more people visiting Japan, customer awareness has also improved. “Japanese brands are definitely getting more traction.”
Lee agrees. “Japanese brands are good for the quality, good for the delivery, and good for the fit for a lot of Asian customers — not just those who live in Asia, but those in North America and Europe, too,” he says. “There is a really high demand of other Asian retailers looking for new brands from Japan.”
The artistic high point came from Ryunosuke Okazaki, who held his first runway show in four years. An artist-cum-designer who creates wearable, exoskeleton-like sculptures and currently makes a living selling to art collectsors, Okazaki’s work has already been exhibited by the world’s most prominent art institutions, including the V&A in London and the Met in New York. For the first time, the designer showed sculptures that hinted more at ready-to-wear. “He was an amazing highlight of the week,” says Abbie. “No one is making clothes like that.”
The place to discover newness
Christelle Cagi Nicolau, head of emerging brands at the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM), was in Tokyo for the first time in around 15 years. With many next-generation Japanese designers looking to eventually show in Paris, Nicolau’s presence signals an interest in the cohort. “Firstly, we’re here to discover new talents, to follow the Japanese markets and to get to know new Japanese brands,” she says.
Luk agrees that the main draw of Tokyo is newness. “We’re mainly here to discover new brands that are not popular, that might be missing in Paris,” he says. “I also want to make sure that what I picked up in Paris is the right thing — the runway shows give me more understanding of the brand than just seeing the product in the showroom.” Luk picked up Ancellm in Paris, but wanted to see its show in Tokyo. “In Paris, the schedule is so packed that I don’t have time to see everything in depth. In Tokyo, I have more time to study and find brands that I would potentially like to carry in our store, and if I see their show it helps me check that I’m making the right decisions,” he adds.
For domestic buyers, Tokyo Fashion Week also provides the chance to pick up something fresh and different. Isetan’s Hashimoto is happy to buy into something more adventurous from local designers — like the avant-garde knitwear by Kakan — even if they’re yet to build a large fan base. “The Japanese market has a lot of people who like new brands,” he says. “Compared to Europe or America, there are more women who will actually buy these things from us, so we’re confident we can buy them, too.”
No longer just a platform for Japanese talent
This season, the international presence in Tokyo wasn’t confined to the front row: many designers were also in town. Yueqi Qi, a Guangzhou-based designer who consistently shows in Tokyo, was a highlight of the week, with her show of idiosyncratic lazer-cut pieces, while French brand Agnès B put on a show at the French embassy with sponsorship from Rakuten’s By R program.
Bringing a dose of newness to the programming was the Run x Andam showroom, situated in the week’s main Shibuya Hikarie venue, with visiting designers including Burc Akyol, Saul Nash, and Alain Paul, who put on a runway show on the official Tokyo schedule. Paul, recipient of the 2025 Andam Special Prize, has three stockists in Tokyo and is looking to expand. “Japan is already an important market for us, and one where the brand resonates strongly,” he says. “Because the brand is still young, our approach is to grow carefully and work with stores that really understand the project. Tokyo Fashion Week is a great opportunity to develop these connections and to build something meaningful and lasting in this market.”
It was also a great opportunity for London-based Nash to reconnect with the Japanese market directly, which he said was negatively affected by Brexit, and the weak yen is causing fewer Japanese buyers to travel to London. “We lost touch with a lot of our Japanese contacts, so it’s actually good to come to them,” Nash says. “We did a lot of work on our end to improve our manufacturing, so now we can come to Japan again and present our collectsion.”
Berlin Showroom, part of a new delegation from Fashion Council Germany (FCG), held two events across Tokyo Fashion Week, in an effort to introduce German fashion talent to the Japanese market. “We noticed through Berlin Fashion Week that the interest coming out of Asia — specifically Japan and South Korea — was growing,” says Sander Cornilly, senior project manager at Fashion Council Germany. After an initial focus on the New York market, FCG sees more potential in Asia, having shifted its attention to Tokyo and Seoul. “I think it’s the right timing,” adds FCG CEO Christiane Arp. “Asia is a super important and interesting market especially for young talents, because there is an openness and there is a knowledge about fashion.”
Designers joining the delegation included Kasia Kucharska, who works with 3D printing and latex, and Milk of Lime, a duo based in rural Germany who use natural dyes to create darkly poetic pieces. “We want to show the diversity of German designers — that it’s more than just the underground, techno, and clubbings,” says Cornilly.
The presence of more Western designers underscores Tokyo as a growing global fashion platform. “We always know that Tokyo is a good market for designers around the world, but the fact we have them now part of Tokyo Fashion Week is something we’re really happy about,” says JFWO’s Imajo.
Whether the city’s best designers are showing on schedule or not, JFWO’s current focus is on nurturing Tokyo’s next generation of talent — even those who don’t take part in the official fashion week. “We do think that if they show during fashion week, it will [generate] good feedback for both of us, but we respect what [brands] think their best timing is,” Imajo says. “Our mission is to make the fashion industry in Japan better and bigger, not just fashion week.”
