5 Japanese Designers in Their 20s That Are Going to Be the Next Big Three
Text Kaijiro Masuda（Fashion Journalist）
Kaijiro Masuda is a fashion journalist who covered more than 250 fashion shows a year and has been watching thousands of exhibitions over the years. For this irregular series of columns, he picks out the Japanese brands that you should know now. In this five-part series, he looks at Japanese brands in their twenties that are going to be the next big three. This time we'll be looking at RequaL≡.
A potential runway star in his twenties to captivate the world
When I talk to Japanese fashion designers in their twenties, I am surprised to find that many of them are extremely knowledgeable about the archives. While many designers in their forties and sixties who are familiar with the history and details of real clothes in Europe and the United States, those young Japanese designers are more likely to dig into a wide range of things that interest them, regardless of country, age or genre.
In particular, the depth of their knowledge of fashion archives and their ability to adapt them to the modern way is something that I often feel unique to these digital natives. A generation that has had the internet and YouTube as a matter of course for as long as they can remember, they don't follow a single genre blindly, but instead, when they are interested, they dig up everything they can find. As a result, I feel that “monsters" are definitely being born. One such potential monster is Doi Tetsuya of RequaL≡.
I was really impressed by the debut show at the S/S 2021 Tokyo Collection. It was a heart-warming and refreshing show. The clothes themselves were also a revelation: there were Yohji Yamamoto-like black double-breasted suits, and HERMES-style scarf-printed shirts. There were also Armani-style jackets with eight sleeves, as if to show how busy Giorgio Armani is; denim with embroidered paper patches on jeans; a hoodie with an embroidered bear, parodying Ralph Lauren; and a dress with a daypack.
It was an incredibly chaotic show and I was surprised at how primitive the samples were at the exhibition, but at the same time I could see that he had a great knowledge of the archives. What's interesting is that he's not only well versed in the designer's archives, but also in things like Ralph Lauren and American vintage. He says that he developed this knowledge while helping out one of his seniors in his recycling business.
During the Covid pandemic, his A/W 2021 and S/S 2022 videos, presented at London Fashion Week, showed a depth of intelligence and humour, proving that his interests and connections are not only in fashion. His A/W 2021 show in Tokyo, a tribute to his mentor Yoshikazu Yamagata's writtenafterwards A/W 2015 show, was also outstanding.
The theme for S/S 2022 is "Reiss Take" (coined from re and miss take). The collection is a deliberate expression of the human moment of making a mistake. The collection is full of "fun mistakes", such as the cummerbund-integrated trousers made from the same chino material as the trousers, and the jacket with sleeves attached to the collar to make it look like it has four sleeves. It was clear from the exhibition that they had a lot of fun making these items.
And this season, there is another big news for the brand. Since his clothes are almost all hand-made, they have been priced as high as luxury brands, making them difficult for fashion lovers of his generation to afford. From this season, however, the major apparel company World has come on board to back up the production, allowing him to use good factories at reasonable wages. As a result, the quality is much higher and the price is about half of what it used to be. It seems that the number of stockists has also increased significantly, so we can expect to see more and more RequaL≡ clothes on the streets this season.
Designer Profile
Tetsuya Doi was born in Okayama in 1993. He was inspired by the rock band Janne Da Arc to pursue a career in fashion. After graduating from Tokyo Mode Gakuen and Bunka Fashion University, he continued his design practice at Koko no Gakko and Me. In 2016, he started Re:quaL≡ (currently called RequaL≡), which won the Special Jury Prize in the Mode category at the 34th Hyères International Fashion and Photography. He has been showing his collections at the Tokyo Collection since the A/W 2020 season and was awarded the Tokyo Fashion Award in 2020.
