Akira Isogawa

Well who´d have thought it? A Japanese-born designer has been named citizen of the year in Australia, a commemorative stamp has been released bearing a portrait of him and there are heated debates with Japan about who gets the right to be called his native land. And it´s not so much that Australians are really keen on fashion designers (although actually they are) — simply Akira Isogawa genuinely deserves it.

He was born in the Japanese city of Kyoto, but in 1986 moved to Sydney and this was probably the biggest loss that the Japanese fashion industry has ever suffered. Akira opened his first boutique in Melbourne in 1993 and by 1996 his clothing had already hit the streets of France and Great Britain. In 1999 the Australian press named Akira Citizen of the Year and in 2005 he was included in the list of Australian Legends, while the Australian postal service released the commemorative stamp in time for his birthday. A retrospective of Isogawa´s work opened in the National Gallery of Victoria — the first exhibition of designer clothing ever to have been held in a national museum in the history of Australia. The list of countries where Akira is sold is endless: the USA, France, Spain, Great Britain, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand — and that´s just the company´s own outlets.

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of the U.S. edition of Vogue and one of the most influential people in the world of fashion, is also a great lover of Akira. In one interview she said, “I don´t think that the character of Miranda Priestley in the novel The Devil Wears Prada was based on me. If it was, then the author doesn´t know me that well. I´ll tell you a secret — the devil actually wears Akira.“

“Harmony and femininity are the main theme of my collections“ says Isogawa. Every piece of Akira is a work of art, if only because — and this is so typically Japanese — more than anything else in the world the designer loves to marry the past and the future. The artificially aged fabrics in his collections represent the past, while the future is to be found in the outline.