Fashion: Brave new world

Award-winning fabric pioneer Yoshiki Hishinuma never fails to stun audiences with his Paris collection extravaganzas. Martin Webb peers into the Tokyo innovator's crystal ball.

Accomplished creator Yoshiki Hishinuma at his Aoyama atelier

Yoshiki Hishinuma is not one for nostalgia. Renowned for developing polyester fabrics for use in intricate, space-age designs, the cross-cultural fashion designer has his mind fixed firmly on the future.

"My work is costume-ical, it's pure fantasy," says Hishinuma, leaning against a glass-topped table in his Tokyo studio. "In fashion they like to look back. If you're in the industry you have to listen very carefully: 'This year it's '60s, this year it's '80s.' But I don't like that. It's too easy just to look back."

Looking ahead to Autumn/Winter 2002/2003, the designer drew on David Lynch's epic, Dune, to create a Paris collection centered on a strong and proud woman battling the fierce elements of an inhospitable desert landscape. Pieces from "Sand Planet" still hang in Hishinuma's studio, displaying the results of the laser cutting technique developed for the collection. Its ultra-fine finish adds lightness to the flowing silhouettes and sandy shades of the highly decorative clothes.

On this day, however, Hishinuma's mind is focused on another first. "I've designed a men's collection. We started sales today," he says, beaming. "I've been working so hard. It's not at all like women's wear, it's very realistic, very casual, but I've spent a lot of energy developing some really complicated materials. I enjoyed it very much."

Hishinuma is, by all accounts, a very busy man. Having been disappointed with the results of delegating control of his shows, the designer now oversees every last detail, even down to mixing the background music in his own private recording studio. He also confesses an addiction to shopping, especially when traveling overseas, and professes to like nothing better than visiting London's contemporary art galleries in search of inspiration. "The ideas are really fresh, really new," he says. "I think young contemporary artists are more fashionable, more seasonable, than fashion designers, and British art seems to be two years ahead."

As a member of the Tokyo fashion establishment, Hishinuma is also a judge at the annual Bunkamura Fashion College end-of-year show. It's a role once filled by his former mentor, Issey Miyake. "When I was in Bunka, he was a judge. Each time he chose my designs, so I entered his studio. I learned a lot there. Most importantly, I learned to follow my instincts."

It was this freshly acquired independence of spirit that drove Hishinuma to strike out as a freelance designer, an enterprise that culminated in the 1983 Tokyo New Fashion Designer's Award. The following year, he established his own label and has never looked back. For today's graduates of Bunka, however, Hishinuma sees the road to success as an unforgiving one.

"Sometimes fashion graduates can enter a big company," Hishinuma says, "but it has nothing to do with creativity, nothing to do with design." In Japan, making it as a designer on your own is a near impossibility, and being based in Tokyo can be very restrictive, he explains.

"Japanese department store buyers are very powerful. If they don't like a color, you have to change it. They only care about what will sell," he says. "In Paris, they have a lot more respect for designers' creativity."

Besides Tokyo, Paris is the city that demands most of Hishinuma's time. His fabrics are exclusively developed and manufactured in Japan and his designs are all realized at the Aoyama atelier, but in order to get international attention, Hishinuma acknowledges that the French capital is second to none.

"Everybody goes there," he explains. "Not only journalists, buyers too. Even buyers from Hong Kong and China never come to Tokyo. They all go to Paris." The designer also says an appreciative audience for his complicated, costume-like creations can't be found outside the traditional heartland of fashion. "In Paris they don't care if something is easy to wear or not. If it's artistic, you get a 'Bravo, Belle!' I love that."

But Hishinuma admits even in Paris there is still pressure to create less artistic, more wearable clothes, saying flamboyant designs "sometimes make my sales agent very crazy." Luckily for the agent, however, the 2003 Spring/Summer collections will herald several departures for the Yoshiki Hishinuma brand.

"I've started to develop a material using cotton," the designer says. "It's my first experience, but next season I'll be able to show you many more new fabrics." Perhaps more surprising than this is the revelation that after working on the men's collection, Hishinuma's focus has shifted from his typical showy style towards streetwear. "It's a really new feeling for me," he says.

Inspired by the sight of actress Penelope Cruz wearing his clothes, Hishinuma also plans to inject some Latin flair into his designs. With futuristic Latin streetwear as a theme, the show promises to be an intriguing one. "This master of the style of tomorrow seems sure to continue making waves in the fashion world way into the foreseeable future."

Photos courtesy of Yoshiki Hishinuma; Anatole Papafilippou

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