What Formichetti Made in Tokyo

Nicola Formichetti is the son of a Japanese flight attendant and an Italian pilot—a biography that reads almost like a character origin story, one that explains a great deal about what his work looks like. Katy England discovered him and handed him a column at Dazed & Confused. He dressed Lady Gaga in raw meat. He became creative director at Diesel. And when Diesel turned thirty and decided to celebrate in Tokyo, they handed him the event.

The show had everything these things tend to have: a runway, an exhibition, a party afterward with the usual cast of beautiful people and cold beer and cocktails that taste better when you’re already in a good mood. What kept it from being pure brand theatre was the casting—and the way Tokyo’s specific fashion subculture had been woven into the structure of the event rather than deployed as exotic backdrop.

Sara Cummings, the alternative model who moves through fashion’s underground like someone who already owns it, walked. So did Kiko Mizuhara—Japanese-American actress and model, probably best known internationally for her role in Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Norwegian Wood, a woman who has exactly the right kind of cool, which is to say the kind that appears to require no effort. And Rola, who is enormous in Japan in the way certain TV personalities become enormous in Japan: omnipresent, effortlessly charming, nearly impossible to fully explain to anyone outside the context.

Japan is the country where I was born, and it plays a central role in my creative process, Formichetti said—and for once that kind of statement didn’t sound like a press quote. His relationship to Tokyo isn’t decorative. The whole event had the quality of something personal being made public, which is exactly when fashion shows actually work.