Akira Isogawa

When I look back, being a teenager growing up in a traditional city in Japan called Kyoto, I felt I was a bit of a fashion victim, really. Well now actually I create fashion. But back then, actually, I was consuming fashion and that's how much I loved [it].
Japanese culture is so different from Western ones. My grandparents had a house next door. They were all wearing actually traditional clothes – kimono. What I noticed about kimono is actually they're made out rectangular shaped cloth. And they have no shapes. Whereas actually, Western clothes has a particular shape that enhance, particularly actually for female, the femininity of female body, but whereas actually kimono is totally unisex. I mean, I've never actually designed kimono myself. But being a kimono designer, I imagine actually, they work on texture, colour, print, and so on, because it's a highly textile driven fashion, and then to me, that's what Japanese fashion is all about. You know, when I design my own collection, I never really force myself to express my Japanese entity, but I feel that it just comes up naturally. And I think what's interesting is that not just, you know, designing something so traditionally Japanese, but then I kind of actually manage to fuse with Australian ease I guess actually. Australia has got this particular attitude – friendly to start with – but it's quite actually casual about things, you know. I feel actually my design is a result of actually, you know, some Japanese heritage with Australian attitude, which is actually friendly and easy.