With Tokyo Fashion Week 2025 currently taking place, we thought we’d look at some legendary Japanese fashion designers for our latest List of 7.
Hanae Mori
A hugely influential figure who helped open Western doors for Japanese designers, Hanae Mori thought designer fashion was a man’s world, until she met Coco Chanel in 1961. Four years after that meeting, she became the first Japanese person to show in New York. She was also the first Asian member of La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, France’s prestigious fashion union. A pioneer of working women, Mori’s designs embodied the rise of Japan as a modern and stylish nation. Known as an “ambassador of beauty,” her elegant clothes blended Western forms with Japanese aesthetics.
Nicknamed “Madame Butterfly” due to her signature winged motifs, Mori had the patronage of several prominent figures, including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan and Grace Kelly. In the 1950s and ‘60s, she designed costumes for hundreds of movies, working with the likes of Yasujiro Ozu and Nagisa Oshima. She also created the outfits for various theater performances, operas and ballets, and the uniforms for Japan Airlines’ cabin attendants. In 1993, when Japan’s then Crown Princess Masako — now empress — married Emperor Naruhito, she wore a Hanae Mori wedding gown adorned with rose-petal patterns. Mori died in 2022. She was 96.
Kenzo Takada
According to Mori, several up-and-coming designers frequented her studio in their younger days. Among them was Kenzo Takada, the man later nicknamed the “magician of colors.” The first Japanese designer to gain prominence on the Paris fashion scene, he decided to head to France’s capital after receiving money from the government because his apartment had to be knocked down to make way for the Tokyo Olympics. Following a month-long journey, he arrived at Gare de Lyon Station on January 1, 1965. The plan was to spend five or six months in the city. He ended up staying for 56 years.
In 1970, Takada opened Jungle Jap, his first boutique. Speaking of the name, he said, “I knew it had a pejorative meaning. But I thought if I did something good, I would change the meaning.” Following protests in the States, he eventually changed the name to Kenzo. Interest in his clothes increased after one of his designs was featured on the cover of Elle magazine. His most famous collection in the 1970s was arguably the voluminous “Big Look,” which spread globally. A pioneer of ready-to-wear clothing, Takada passed away due to complications from COVID-19 in 2020.
Issey Miyake
Just a few months after moving to Paris, Takada was joined in the City of Lights by another promising Japanese designer. Issey Miyake studied alongside Takada at the tailoring and dressmaking school, l’École de la Chambre Syndical de la Couture, and the pair formed a close bond. It was all very sophisticated. After the Paris Protests of 1968, however, Miyake had an awakening. “I realized that the future was in making clothing for the many, not the few. I wanted to make clothing that was as universal as jeans and T-shirts,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
In 1969, Miyake gained industry experience in New York working with famed designer Geoffrey Beene. The following year, he returned to Japan, opening the Miyake Design Studio in Tokyo. A visionary known for his Pleats Please line, fragrances and technology-driven designs, he also produced mock turtlenecks for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. There were many other famous Miyake devotees, including Zaha Hadid and Joni Mitchell. Miyake, who lived through the atomic bombing of his hometown of Hiroshima, passed away on August 5, 2022, six days before Mori. He was considered one of Japan’s “Big Three” fashion designers.
Rei Kawakubo
Another member of the Big Three is, of course, Rei Kawakubo, the founder of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. GQ’s Max Berlinger described her as “the ultimate renegade designer,” adding that she “makes audiences question everything they know about conventional clothes.” A trailblazer of cutting-edge fashion, she designs outfits and spaces that provoke questions rather than providing answers. An enigmatic figure who defies convention, Kawakubo once compared her creations to Zen koans — the unsolvable riddles Buddhist teachers present to their students to show the limits of their intellect and subsequently set their minds free.
Despite receiving no formal fashion training, Kawakubo launched Comme des Garçons in 1969, and established it as a company four years later. The name — a French phrase meaning “like boys” — was taken from a line in Françoise Hardy’s 1963 hit “Tous les Garçons et les Filles.” More than half a century after its launch, the brand continues to shape global fashion. As for the founder, she’s been the source of inspiration for many designers, such as Ann Demeulemeester, Helmut Lang and her former apprentice, Junya Watanabe. Kawakubo works closely with her husband, Adrian Joffe, Comme des Garçons’ president.
Yohji Yamamoto
Before marrying Joffe, Kawakubo was in a relationship with Yohji Yamamoto, the other member of Japan’s Big Three. Though they never collaborated, the pair both debuted together in Paris in 1981 in front of a small audience at the InterContinental Hotel. Like Kawakubo, Yamamoto has continued to challenge fashion convention with his nonconformist style. He’s also built a career on proving that black is beautiful. Speaking of the color, he once said, “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy and mysterious. It can swallow light or it can make things sharp. But above all, black says ‘don’t bother me.’”
From a young age, Yamamoto felt different. His father was killed in World War II, shortly after he was born. In a rare interview with The Independent in 2010, he told Susannah Frankel that his “anger started from that moment.” He gave up a prospective legal career to assist his mother — who he claimed “wore nothing but black mourning clothes” — in her dressmaking business. After traveling around Europe for two years, he then launched Y’s, his first brand, in 1972. He immediately caused a stir with his menswear-inspired clothes for women.
Kansai Yamamoto
At the opposite end of the scale to the elegant austerity of Yohji Yamamoto is the man he shares a surname with. Described in The New York Times as “fashion’s ultimate fantasist,” Kansai Yamamoto was one of the most flamboyant designers Japan ever produced. He drew inspiration from the Japanese concept of basara, or wild maximalism, the antithesis to the wabi-sabi aesthetic. A designer to the stars, he was described as “a genius” by Lady Gaga and dressed some of the biggest names in the music industry, including Sir Elton John, Marc Bolan and, most famously, David Bowie.
The “Life on Mars” singer bought some items from Yamamoto’s shop on Kings Road after the Yokohama native became the first Japanese designer to show in London. He then wore several of his outfits for his 1972 Ziggy Stardust tour, before personally commissioning the Japanese designer to create his outfits for his Aladdin Sane tour the following year. Speaking to Tokyo Weekender in 2012, Yamamoto said his “aim was to make clothes that nobody else was attempting.” He added that he had “a crazy mind” and was “always looking to have fun and generate a good atmosphere.” Yamamoto passed away in 2020.
Chisato Tsumori
Like the late Kansai Yamamoto, Chisato Tsumori is known for her vibrant and playful designs. Her prints, which are painted by hand, draw inspiration from a variety of sources such as manga and her travels. In an interview with Modem in 2010, she described her work as having a “childish side to it.” She added, “I see myself as an actress who likes to change skins, who wants to be sexy, cute and relaxed at the same time. She can use my collection as an ideal disguise to correspond to her different states of mind.”
As a child, Tsumori dreamed of becoming a mangaka, but in the end, felt the task of building stories was too “complicated.” Inspired by her mother, who also made clothes, she pursued a career in fashion instead. After graduating from Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College, she began her career at Issey Miyake in 1977. She eventually became the head designer of the company’s “Issey Sports” line, which was later renamed “I.S. Chisato Tsumori Designs.” Miyake then supported his protégé when she set up her own brand in 1990. Tsumori has since gained a cult following.
