Female Gaze: a glimpse

at

Tokyo Fashion Week

AW 2026

by Rusana Talybova

In early March 2026, Tokyo marches into its most visually stunning season, where shy pink blossoms gain the courage to emerge from winter’s grasp and adorn the ever-twisting streets and walkways. This waking period, where sakura is so ubiquitous it stops making sense to photograph each bloom after a while, is the crown jewel of the mass osmosis of Japanese culture — particularly in its natural wonders. Sakura imprints such a unique image that no other country is associated with pink blossom trees as closely as Japan is.

Echoing this unique position, the fashion scene in Tokyo has always been about embracing your most courageous, experimental self. If current online trends are only now suggesting being the main character of your story, Tokyo locals have long naturally chosen to cosplay themselves.

As every neighborhood here has its own theme — punk-tinged vintage haven Koenji, ever-daring youth hub Harajuku, glamorous, label-loving Roppongi — every designer at Tokyo Fashion Week has their own distinct character, yet remains recognizable enough that you can easily imagine Tokyoites wearing these garments head-to-toe.

Tokyo streets have always been about experimentation. Tokyo runways replicate these experiments and double them. Decked out in layers of initially clashing yet ultimately balanced ideas, Harajuku girls had a distinct presence outside of Japan even before Gwen Stefani.

Compared to its sister Fashion Weeks in other fashion capitals, which are mostly concerned with musings on the human condition, Tokyo has persevered in its maximalist dedication — similar to monozukuri (literally translated to “making things”) in traditional crafts, a profound commitment to perfection — to explore shapes, concepts, and ideas that bend the imagination and envision what it is like to be non-human.

Yet, in 2017, the creator of street style magazine FRUiTS — Shuichi Aoki — shut down the legendary Japanese fashion almanac with the words, “there were no more fashionable kids to photograph.”

The current Tokyo Fashion Week proves how that decision was too hasty. Fashionable kids were aplenty — on every row from front to back, on every runway from Monday to Saturday.

Such characters were easy to observe in their extroverted splendor at one of the first shows of the week — equally expressive and always life-affirming, Tokyo-based Chinese designer Yueqi Qi presented her collection titled Rosa. The venue, Jiyu Gakuen School, built by Frank Lloyd Wright, once served as a Christian all-girls institution and stands as a symbol of exchange between old and new. Choosing a venue with this history to showcase Qi’s mind-bending, liberating designs felt like a deliberate protest against the orderly existence of its former occupants. Hidden behind unassuming suburban two-storey houses, the building stands out against Ikebukuro’s monotonous backdrop of cement, asphalt, and glass. Not knowing its history upon arrival, the creaking wooden floors and expansive courtyard glimpsed through tall, soaring windows made me wonder whether we had, in fact, been invited to a church.

Yueqi Qi

As the show began, music flowed through the halls: ambient synth pads joined by occasional rhythmic thumps lulled visitors into a dreamlike state, where they were greeted by the image of a woman — gentle like a rose in appearance, yet commanding in her self-awareness.

And so these women multiplied and moved down the runway, walking through halls lit by just two warm lights, almost like artificial suns. We began to notice the interplay of contrasts mentioned in the press release, “lightness and weight, softness and support,” reflected in both materials and construction. Monochromatic laser-cut dresses resembled delicate carcasses, revealing much of the body while remaining rigid against the models’ steps. Footwear accompanied them in playful contrast: Timberlands adorned with laces, beads, and embroidery, or soft winter boots and sneakers elevated on bubble-like soles — courtesy of the Japanese brand Grounds. The non-chalant Olsen hair tuck was re-imagined with oversized clips and skinny neck scarves, both barely holding in place. In makeup, softness and force coexisted: shy jewel droplets mimicking tears and every bold lip trend from the 2000s — overlined, frosted, sometimes both. The color palette remained harmoniously pastel — baby blues, blushing pinks, and shy violets — creating a striking yet balanced image, like a carefully tended garden where roses are still free to roam.

Yueqi Qi is known for her fairy godmother-like ability to transform difficult, delicate materials into courageous forms with familiar origins. Previous collections featured intricately sequined sportswear and skirts made entirely of beads. With each season, she proves that the magical girl is real, and this is what she wears to the grocery store. In this show, Qi became that magical girl herself: she touched track jackets and tights, and flower fields bloomed across them.

With this collection, the designer continues her tradition of fashioning her woman as an urban nymph — an ethereal, feminine being known for her mischievousness, elusiveness, and a zest for life. This proximity to reality, paired with otherworldliness, reads like Björk’s discography and stage persona: whimsical, entrenched in her world, and refreshingly honest. Yet, Qi’s looks remain ultimately wearable by Tokyo’s standards. After the show, distinguishing between models and guests proved difficult. Every outfit — on and off of the runway — told a story through its layers of fabric, elevated shoes, bold makeup and hair choices.

As the show notes stated, “No rush for the blooming season. No hurry to open.” Why rush, when beauty is everywhere — and, most importantly, already within you?

A different designer, equally beloved by the Japanese public, approached feminine identity with a sharper blade. Viviano Sue, now based in Tokyo, grew up between China and the United States and continues to expand his international presence — his designs were recently worn by daring darlings of the public like Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, and Hudson Williams.

Viviano Sue

There is a punchiness, a jolt of energy you feel when you look at this collection. We all saw her in passing at least once, strutting down the street or entering a café, and all felt a similar satori: she feels so complete, so clear is her self-reliance… How do I become as confident as her?

Titled A Portrait of Her, Unnamed, Viviano’s collection celebrates the decision to remain an enigma to others and even to oneself, and to find confidence in that very uncertainty. In a world increasingly reliant on labels and right/left affiliation, stripping your identity of common denominators is already a radical act.

This resolve manifests through layered stylistic decisions. Generous ruffles appear on jackets that hug the torso tightly as to remind you to have your back proud and tall. The unruly, messy hair seen across recent fashion weeks might be the current ultimate idea of female liberation, much wanted after the carefully controlled polish of a clean girl.

Heavy, Twin Peaks–esque scarlet velvet curtains envelop the runway like a soundproof cocoon, placing the models somewhere between time and space. Despite this temporal and spatial ambiguity, the designs were reminiscent of particular fashion eras. We have a palpable legacy of 80’s power dressing in the expansion and exaggeration of fabrics, hair and silhouettes. Gold sequins and burgundy vinyl catch every source of light, natural or artificial, while frizzy, voluminous hair serve as independent orbits. Certain looks evoke the drama of the gothic and vampy 1910’s: ruched dresses in midnight black and morning-glory blue evoke the most romantic vision of any epoch. They make you want to feverishly gather all these multitudes of fabric and flee the suffocating ballroom for freedom somewhere in the dewy grass fields of Albion. The collection ultimately asks whether the world can remain as open and borderless as we once imagined.

As a woman, conversations I have lately with other women often revolve around how every centimeter of our bodies and souls continue to remain a topic of public discussion. Like pin-up girls from the wartime posters, existing purely to inspire vigour in soldiers, I find myself asking how long we must live in a world where nearly any choice a woman makes in private results into a heated reaction in the open. In a time when being verbal is the key to success, when you’re measured by the volumes of narratives and the speed it's pushed out with, even the non-verbal act of dressing becomes a statement.

Every bodily movement of a woman elicits several meanings; we are always balancing on a precipice between being too much and not enough. Sandra Lee Bartky even formulated a specific number of these semantic polarities in Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power, "Feminine movement, gesture, and posture must exhibit not only constriction, but grace and a certain eroticism restrained by modesty: all three at once.”

The reaction to the existence of a woman — any woman, in any space or context — is not only verbal, it’s also in the gaze. Women see themselves in the third person, always aware of her own eyes as those observing her world, and the eyes of those who observe her. Not unlike women, Japanese culture too tends to become the subject of similarly colored conversations — that of opinionated disposition, fascination, objectification, and continuous surprise at the country’s otherness.

One recurring topic I have observed over the years is the perplexity surrounding the way some Japanese women walk (again, not all women, but the “not” is often omitted from the equation). It is the so-called “pigeon-toed,” slightly inward-turned gait known as uchimata, described as silly, adorable, unnecessary, or even baffling — while its origins may lie in something entirely neutral: historically, the constriction of the kimono limited the natural range of movement of the lower body.

And so we return to garments:

how they shape us physically, then mentally, and finally imprint that image onto the minds of others.

We were lied to about the innocence and mundanity of clothing.

The length of a hemline, the tightness of fabric — they do not exist as objective units of measurement alone.

Women are judged through them, actively and subjectively.

In clothing choices, layers, colors, patterns, or their absence — they all signify something, even when we wish, at times, simply to be left alone.

And within that universal desire, to be unbothered, to be free, we feel a kind of sisterhood toward a certain woman we saw on Tokyo’s runways.

She dresses at the last minute, yet always makes sure to wear something that brings her comfort, physical or emotional. She doesn’t have to think about the image she has to present; all the time in the world she has, she can dedicate to pursuits outside of her garments. Hell, even to garments if she feels like it. But she always dresses for herself. She sees the world in first person, not third.