Tomorrow Consulting Creates Japanese Fashion Brand Incubator
TOMORROW, TODAY: Fashion accelerator Tomorrow Consulting is launching an incubator to grow high-potential Japanese fashion brands worldwide. It was created with the Japan External Trade Organization and Japanese influencer Daisuke Gemma, and has chosen as its first brand Motofumi “Poggy” Kogi.
“This project comes from a big need of the Japanese market, to help and support talented young designers in new ways, to help the development of their brands,” Luca Corsetti, Tomorrow Consulting’s managing partner, told WWD. “We curated a selection of brands and, for sure, Poggy was the very first one.”
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Corsetti said Japanese brand executives will be aided to understand the needs of international markets, including communications and operations. “We decided to support from end to end — from the strategy up to the execution of the product,” he explained.
Corsetti called Kogi, United Arrows & Sons creative director who is known widely as “Poggy the Man,” among the most talented people in Japanese fashion. “Poggy has one of the most brilliant visions about the market at large,” he said.
Kogi’s brand includes collaborations with rising Japanese designers, each one focused on a particular product category. The collection on display currently in Tomorrow’s Right Bank showroom includes shirts made of repurposed bananas and jeans with faces drawn on them, and is presented with a “box” of collaborations theme.
Kogi said through an interpreter that the new accelerator will help broaden his brand’s exposure. Further, that “by doing this project, [I want] to experience what new designers have to face when they are going to show something overseas…so [I am] more competent to be more like a mentor to new, young emerging designers in Japan.”
Tomorrow will continue expanding the accelerator. “This March we will release another three projects. The idea is to create this room of talented Japanese designers ready to face the market,” explained Corsetti, adding ultimately the idea is to have about 10 or 12 Japanese brands altogether in the incubator.
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