TOKYO FASHION WEEK 2024 Autumn/Winter DAY SIX - Anrealage Street Style
Photos by Guest Collaborator TokyoFashion!
Tokyo Fashion Week came to an official end this evening, but there are two fashion shows in Tokyo tomorrow (both of which we're excited about) - so it's not quite over for us...or you!
All of the street style in this set was shot at the debut menswear collection show of multi-award-winning Japanese fashion brand Anrealage. The brand usually shows in Paris, so the fact that they not only came back to Tokyo but did so for the first ever Anrealage Homme collection was a treat for Japanese fashion fans.
The thousand plus attendees that gathered at the massive Tokyo Telecom Center tonight witnessed another major milestone for a fast-rising fashion label that came up from the streets of Harajuku to be heralded as one of Japan's top young brands, joining labels like Sacai and Kolor in representing Japan on the world stage.
Anrealage designer Kunihiko Morinaga attended both the prestigious Waseda University (hello Yohji Yamamoto!) and Tokyo's Vantan Design Institute of Fashion. He launched Anrealage (A REAL UNREAL AGE) in 2003, debuted at Tokyo Collection in 2005, and debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2014. Morinaga has either won or been a runner-up for many top fashion prizes, including winning the Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix and being a top contender for the LVMH Prize.
In the years before the brand's meteoric rise to Paris and beyond, you'd often see Anrealage worn by fashion students, artists, and other creatives on the streets of Tokyo as well as in street snap magazines like FRUiTS and TUNE. Many of the brand's early iconic pieces were colorful handmade patchwork, instantly recognizable and treasured for their quality and one-of-a-kind nature. The debut Anrealage Homme runway show paid tribute to those early works with several patchwork-inspired looks, ensuring everyone in attendance that - no matter how famous his label gets - the designer has no intention of forgetting he started on the streets.
One other reason that we were excited for the Anrealage show is that all of the headpieces in the show were designed by young (early 20s) fast-rising Japanese designer Nori Enomoto.
We first met Nori in Harajuku when she was just a fashionable high school student. In the few years since then, she graduated from high school, graduated from Tokyo's famous Bunka Fashion College, became a pattern maker for top Japanese labels, launched her own brand, began selling out all of her work as fast as she could make it, and started showing her work at exhibitions during Paris Fashion Week.
The fact that Nori is so young but was entrusted with the key headpieces for a major show by a major Japanese fashion brand says a lot about what her future likely holds. We expect to see her work on the runway more in the future and we recommend that you follow her rise as well if you aren't already.
Tokyo Fashion Week is over now, but we've got a few more shows and a lot of street style still to edit - so you'll likely see a few more updates from us in the next week! Thanks for following along! Please let us know if you'd like to see more Japanese street style here in the future.