Renata Espinosa
March 14th, 2007 @ 10:56 PM - Tokyo

While the majority of the clothes at Japan Fashion Week display a sense of theatricality, the shows themselves have tended to be rather serious and restrained affairs. There are no pre- or post-show celebrity and paparazzi antics and they always start on time. In short, they're professional and to the point. And rather than a thumping rock/hip-hop/techno/take your pick soundtrack, most designers opt for more subdued music.

At Hiroko Koshino's show on Tuesday, for example, there was a live classical violinist playing a concerto interspersed with music by Brian Eno. The effect of the music could be quite beautiful at times, lending it a cinematic air (Peter Greenaway, anyone?), but other times it felt overwrought and heavy, making the collections seem dated and even slightly pretentious. It is a fashion show, after all, and not a funeral procession.

On the other hand, it's true that runway theatrics and antics often distract from the centerpiece of the show - the collection - so there's nothing wrong with the atmospheric equivalent of a palate cleanser to help bring the focus back on the clothes.

Take Gut's Dynamite Cabarets on Wednesday, March 14, the design duo Cabaret Aki and Jackal Kuzu's first showing at Japan Fashion Week. It had elements of a Heatherette show, albeit on a smaller scale and minus the maddening crowds, but the clothes, well, they were standard issue street wear. The label started as an underwear brand, and the audience certainly got a kick out of the transvestite models clutching handfuls of plastic gold bling, the male models strutting their stuff in the label's bedazzled boxer briefs and diva dancers pirouetting their way down the runway. It wasn't groundbreaking fashion - graffiti print cargo pants, Elton John-esque shaggy faux fur coats - but we give them props for getting the audience to crack a smile.

At Dresscamp, the clothes were the show, taking cues from Haute Couture for the women's collection and emphasizing the male physique in the men's collection. Designer Toshikazu Iwaya said post-show that he was no longer interested in showing men as strong or aggressive figures and opted instead to dress them in much more feminine - and dare we say - prissy attire that wouldn't be out of place on ladies who lunch.

"I wanted to show the beauty of the man's body," said Iwaya through an interpreter. The dandy-worthy looks consisted of skinny jacquard pants that ended just above the ankle, fur trimmed trench coats that emphasized, as Iwaya described it, the male "bust," and accessories such as jewelry-like silver suspenders and dainty Vuitton-like purses.

Dresscamp's women's collection tread the ground of '80s era Haute Couture, and the visual theme of these costumey frocks was birds of paradise: Dresses meant to make the wearer look like an ostrich, peacock feather prints and one dress that even resembled a chicken suit. In the end, though, both collections came across as more cartoon than couture, as though they were meant to parody the idea of high fashion rather than project an image of pure beauty, as was the actual intent.

At Matohu, a young brand designed by Hiroyuki Horihata and Makiko Sekiguchi, the theme was "Namban," the Japanese term for Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors of the 1500s who traveled to Japan. The collection explored the intermingling of European and Japanese cultures - the capes, cloaks and striped fabrics brought by the explorers, along with the appropriation of the Christian cross as a fashion accessory.

The idea for the collection was good in concept - after all, the topic of influence of Europe on Japanese fashion and vice versa is a timely one today, with many young designers from both places getting inspiration from the other - but the actual clothes suffered from poor fabric choices like iridescent velvet, a murky color palette and an overall dowdy silhouette.