On the Ground: Tokyo Fashion Week SS21

Tokyo Fashion Week

While not as hyped as its “Big Four” counterparts, Tokyo Fashion Week is a hub for innovative design and cutting-edge fashion. The city alone is lauded for its bold street style, a place where there are no rules and self-expression is at the forefront of fashion. Home to designers and labels like Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons, Tokyo has established itself as a fashion-forward playground, a melting pot of design, culture and trends. 

It is then no surprise that Tokyo Fashion Week follows suit, a display of talent inspired by the city’s rich fashion heritage and design aesthetics to deliver a diverse spectacle highlighting Eastern style with some nods to the West. And, it is on this stage that Shoop Clothing presents for the first time ever.

Shoop Clothing

Miriam Sanz and Yohei Oki are the creative minds behind the Spanish-Japanese label Shoop Clothing, offering a blend of contemporary unisex collections. Shoop will present their SS21 collection on October 17th at Tokyo Fashion Week, a collection “inspired by current events, relating to both before and after the pandemic, and due to this the new necessities that have come about in terms of the clothes that we wear.” This will be the duo’s debut at Tokyo Fashion Week, as their previous presentation in March was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Along with the collection, the pair will unveil their latest collaboration with footwear giant Asics, a unique and adapted sneaker that according to Shoop, “decontextualizes the classic running model, taking it to the street and offering different options of wear, thereby promoting responsible consumerism.” The pair has been fully reconstructed and newly assembled to include a feature of spats that allows the wearer to combine the piece as they wish, either with the sneaker itself, or separately. The silhouette will be available exclusively at SVD and Tokyo retailer GR8 in two independent colorways. 

There to capture it all will be Adrian Bianco of Sabukaru magazine.

Adrian Bianco

Known for his past online magazine Biancissimo, Adrian Bianco is a man of many trades, his creativity spanning a wealth of themes including photography, sneakers, anime and fashion, noting some of his favorite Japanese designers as Kosuke Tsumura and Rei Kawakubo, saying “You got to pay tribute to the legends!”

Moving from his native Munich to Tokyo, he has in a short time developed his own creative agency Bianco Bianco and new, online magazine Sabukaru. When asked what inspired his move to Japan he says, “I always needed to be here. It wasn’t inspiration, it was a pure need and must. I belong here, an alien who feels at home on a foreign planet.”

Bianco will be on the ground at Shoop’s SS21 runway show, and never having been to Tokyo Fashion Week before he tells us, “I am usually a bit more behind the scenes and I am not a 100% spotlight/flashing lights person. I do not know what to expect, it’s exciting!”

Check out SVD’s coverage with Shoop and Bianco on Saturday, October 17th on Instagram. And, don’t miss out on Shoop’s FW20 collection coming soon to SVD.