Designer Yasutaka Funakoshi of Fashion Brand Alice Auaa

Decadence Degeneration Gauze Life Silhouette Day-to-day Gaia Myself Translucence Chaos [The earthquake] presented an opportunity I didn't have any money. But many companies had gone out of business... and shops had closed... That's what happened after the quake. So it became comparatively easy to rent space. To create is to imagine. To explain it simply, what really matters is to envisage things. About people. About the town and scenery. You imagine what a person does at a certain time at a certain place. That's what I think is most important. For all my collections until now --I've been doing this for some 15 years now-- I've almost always used this method to visualize things. Gothic culture from the 80s... Punk culture and so on... I don't deny that I have been influenced by that, and I really like that culture a lot. I take that seriously. So I don't want to take the easy way out when I create things. I'm not satisfied with things that are 'instant.' Not for myself... nor for my customers. That might be what differentiates me. My favorite materials to use... are almost all made in our own factory. For example our employees shred nylon by hand to create net fabric. We hand-knit gauze from scratch. And so on. Almost al materials that people usually don't think of using. I want to treasure the rawness of the materials. I don't want to make cheap things. To me fashion is a weapon that I use to express myself. I think you could say that it's my most valuable asset. But speaking more generally, the meaning of fashion lies in self expression. That's the most important aspect, I think.