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Hidetaka Fukuzono: Tokyo Fashion Designer Blends Tradition and InnovationMen's apparel brands have recently taken some of the spotlight from the women's wear lines that have traditionally dominated Tokyo Fashion Week.
Whereabouts, a fashion house owned by Hidetaka Fukuzono, 29, is one of the men making their mark by showing at the Tokyo Collection.
Fukuzono initially gained public attention when he became the first Japanese student at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium.
Although he originally intended finding work in Europe straight out of school, a street fashion magazine sent to him by a friend in Japan changed his mind.
"I found so much energy in the fashion styles of Tokyo's boys and girls in the magazine. They were very free and varied.
I felt like I found an appeal with Japan that I had not been able to see before I went to Europe.
Then I had second thoughts about the place where I should make clothing and turned to Tokyo, " Fukuzono says.
Whereabouts opened its first store, in Tokyo's trendy Shibuya, on Sept. 19, almost years after the foundation of the label.
It wouldn't have been so easy (to open a shop) in Europe," Fukuzono says.
He explains that it is relatively easy for new designers to become prominent in Tokyo because there are so many young people living here who have a high regard for "newness."
more: mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/n... (660)
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9/10/2005 | Viewed 18,197 time(s)
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