The Tamesis
Tokyo Fashion Week doesn’t officially kick off until March 16, but many of the city’s best-known and brightest designers have been cut off from their main schedules and have been aimless throughout February, largely because of production logistics issues. Key takeaway: Tokyo is always fashion week.
The first one out of the door was Fetico.
Emi Funayama’s sexy label is gaining momentum as one of Japan’s most noteworthy women’s brands and is entering a new stage of maturity. The designer, who turned 40 this year, has been thinking about the meaning of elegant growth and named this collection “Elegant Silhouette”. “It’s been five years since I started this brand and I’ve grown up, so I’ve also made a conscious effort to create clothes that appeal to more mature women,” she said during a backstage press conference.
This season, she used three powerful women as her starting points: painter Vanessa Bell, model-turned-war correspondent Lee Miller, and Gabrielle Chanel, the freethinker responsible for shaping femininity in the 20th century and beyond. Their influence was evident in everything: military jackets and suits, furry tweed suits and pleated pajama shirts, worn by carefully selected models of all ages. “I wanted to show a more realistic image of women wearing Fetico,” Funayama said.
Hems were modest, but subtle signs of Fetico eroticism were reliably present throughout: sailor pants cinched in the back like a corset, rose-print velvet suits and dresses cinched at the waist, while pencil skirts with pleats in the front hugged the hips. Particularly charming were the pleated pants dangling on the cement floor of Tokyo’s Museum of Modern Art.
From pillbox hats to Mary Janes, the collection had a soft, old-world charm that Funayama enhanced (and was extremely modern) with textures in denim and leather pieces. A striking leather jacket sculpted with princess stitching: convincingly sexy at any age, but also just right.
