Tokyo designers woo ice queens and Gothic Lolitas

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Gothic Lolitas and tribal snow princesses strutted down the runways at Tokyo fashion week on Friday, showing how local designers are trying to find a niche between Japan's global brands and its anarchic streetwear scene.

As one of the world's biggest luxury goods markets, Japan should be every emerging designer's paradise. But its famously enthusiastic shoppers and fashion-crazy schoolgirls tend to either buy global brands or underground labels that revolve around the latest teenage fad, leaving little space for new, upmarket domestic designers.

"My brand doesn't completely fit the Japanese market, because the market is 'easy to wear' or the big brands -- Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada. They don't care about Japanese designers much," said Tamae Hirokawa, who launched her label, Somarta, in 2006.

At Hirokawa's show, long-haired models with sparkling tiaras were wrapped in bohemian knitted coats and jackets, or dresses in frosty blue and white with silver embellishments.

Hirokawa said she designed her clothes for an imaginary tribe living in a cold country -- cue an electric blue yeti coat, silver feather capes, and a shrug resembling a cluster of icicles.

Somarta is now being sold in Tokyo boutiques that used to only feature foreign luxury brands, something Hirokawa described as a small revolution.

Other Japanese designers that started small have moved to overseas catwalks, following the examples of Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. Flamboyant label Dress Camp, for example, debuted at Tokyo fashion week, which was launched in 2005, but is now shown in Paris.

While most designers here still aspire to a global career and a big break in Milan, Paris or New York, some are shifting their focus to new markets, closer to home.

"We've been thinking about Europe and the American market, not about Asia, even though we're Asians," said Takashi Mori, who designs a menswear range, Molfic, and also collaborates with Hirokawa on the music for her show.

He pointed out that for Japanese designers, there are several advantages to targeting fashionistas in Taiwan, Korea and China, not least the issue of sizes and body shapes.

GOTHIC LOLITAS

Although Japan is seen as a trendsetter in Asia, there was only a limited contingent of foreign buyers and journalists at Tokyo fashion week.

That may be partly due to the event's lack of focus. The shows spanned from traditional kimono tailors to subculture brands, such as h.Naoto -- whose loyal clientele consists of so-called Gothic Lolitas.

At the h.Naoto show on Friday, Gothic Lolitas turned out in full force: girls and women in their teens and twenties, dressed in black petticoats and corsets, their hair in pig-tails or bird's nest hairstyles.

The show started with floor-length spray-painted coats in yellow and purple, wild splashes of color that shocked the Goths in the audience, who looked as dazzled as vampires in the sun.

But the bulk of the collection catered to a fan base for whom the new black will always be, well, black, with lacy black ragdoll dresses, punky T-shirts and platform boots.

Sulking models slid down the catwalk dressed in torn petticoats and cute bonnets, pieces of fur dangling from their shoulders -- think French maids from hell, or shepherdesses who have just slaughtered their favorite lamb.

"I especially love h.Naoto because there's stuff that's work-appropriate and then there's this, where you can dress like a princess," said Kate Havas, a 24-year-old English teacher from the United States who lives in Osaka.

She was wearing a white petticoat and blouse and said that the Gothic Lolita trend was taking off in the United States, too.

"I love the fact that you can dress up every single day," she said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)