During the month of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo 2012-13 A/W “THE ORCHESTRA SHOW” will be held at SR6 adjoined to Shibuya Parco Part 1. This project that brings together various creators around a limited time shop in which over 60 brands will be participating will be brought to you by the GYPSY THREE ORCHESTRA (hereinafter referred to as, “G3O”), a creative team consisting of Hideaki Shikama, former director of Acycle SHIPS JET BLUE, creative manager Tsubasa Tokita, and event coordinator and brand director, KIRA. With little information given to the mass media the G30 is still wrapped in mystery. What is it?

The G3O was started at the end of last year and has been creating a lot of buzz, but it is still wrapped in mystery.

Shikama: G3O is a directing team consisting of Tokita, KIRA and Shikama. We are looking to tear down the walls of genre, gender, and nationality, and engage in various fashion-related activities.

KIRA: Tokita is the leader who takes care of overall management, Shikama is in charge of buying and direction, and I am in charge of planning and PR, but it’s a coordinated effort with each of us helping the other out.

Tokita: Since we are all from different fields our network is gradually expanding. The limited time shop, which will be G3O’s first project, will be directed by Shikama who originally worked primarily with men’s fashion. It will focus mainly on men’s fashion, but I am hoping each of us could supplement this core with our field of expertise, with me doing ladies’ fashion and KIRA doing party-related items.

Please tell us a little bit about this limited time shop.

Shikama: During fashion week shows are the main attraction and in conjunction with the shows there will be parties, with exhibitions following the week after. However, in the past there has never been a shop so we wanted to try one. There are a lot of brands that aren’t doing shows but are still producing great creations so we wanted to create a store that would give these independent players a chance to showcase their creations.

But you could’ve done, for example, a joint exhibition,… why did you choose the form of a shop?

Shikama: Firstly, we wanted to connect with general customers. The basement can be used as an exhibition hall and we think that journalists and stylists will be coming to the shop during Fashion Week, so this offers the general consumer who cannot go to the actual shows an opportunity to experience what it’s like at the shows. Plus, you can actually purchase clothes and bring them home. We come from the generation that lined up in front of stores in Harajuku to buy clothes, so we want to bring back that lost excitement to make changes for the present.

left: Tsubasa Tokita, center: Hideaki Shikama, right: KIRA

So, you’re all the same age?

Tokita: We’re each about three years apart from other, so, for example, when we talk about ura-Harajuku, our perspectives are different since we’re different ages. That’s why it’s really interesting for the three of us to talk, and a lot of new ideas are born.

KIRA: There is no pecking order between us. We’re all connected by the same sense of values which enables us to freely express our opinions to each other.

Shikama: All three of us like a wide variety things and are not focused on one genre. This is the basis for selecting creations for our shop; we placed importance on how the product is linked to the designer regardless of genre. The foundation of our idea is linking people, and our emphasis is on getting people who participate to understand what we want to do. We are really grateful to all the people who supported us with a common vision from our mentors with greater career than ours, to the young brands that just started.

So, what is it that the three of you “want to do”?

Shikama: We take issue with the recent trend in today’s fashion to include culture as an accent point, for example, “the theme for this collection will be rock”. We want to transcend this superficial relationship and get actual professional skateboarders, rappers, and graffiti writers to participate in the event thereby providing, through the shop, a place to share the latest information and buy clothes that have been filtered through this real subculture and sports culture.

I feel expectations are soaring even more because of the lack of information about the event.

KIRA: There are a lot of people who want every little piece of information, and that consequently reverberates through the mass media. Meanwhile, with fashion there is something fascinating about having an event shrouded in a little mystery, and wanting to know more about it pumps energy into the event. So, while maintaining this great aspect of fashion that we have all experienced, we want to create a place to connect with the customer and have them enjoy themselves.

Shikama: Before the Internet, you could only gather fashion information from magazines. Even if you went to a shop after looking through magazines, what you wanted would already have been sold out (laugh). Sure, it was disappointing, but that was the fun part. You’d say to yourself, “if that’s the case I’m going to come to this store every day (laugh)”. The younger generations have not experienced this is as much and we wanted to create something fresh by purposely withholding information.

Tokita: In the industry you hear people talking about how there’s a decrease in passion for young people’s fashion, but I don’t think anything’s changed. It’s more the case that money is just being spent differently. Nowadays there is a lot of information not just about fashion, but also about one’s entire lifestyle, from food to interior design. It’s great that the amount of attractive things in the world is increasing, but the value of these things is being lost with the overabundance of information. That’s why we’re planning this event while being conscious of giving value to information.

Your project will take place in conjunction with Fashion Week, and I was wondering what opinion you have of past Tokyo Fashion Weeks?

Tokita: When I first learned of Fashion Week I was still a consumer so I thought it was a different world. I was a little disappointed at the distance that I felt from the event, and even when I entered the industry I felt that no good will come to the fashion industry unless we are able to engage the customer. That’s why we wanted to create a place for customers to become involved in conjunction with Fashion Week, which I think is something that the fashion industry needs right now.

Shikama: In the case of Tokyo in particular, the customers make the event. Young people are dressing great, and it’s important for Fashion Week to get these people that are creating Tokyo fashion to participate.

KIRA: Honestly, I don’t know for whom and for what purpose past Fashion Weeks have been held. If you don’t involve the customer and make the event more dynamic you will never get the attention of the world. We are trying to express this idea through our project.

Shikama: The key to success of this project will be the level of explosiveness of the brands participating. Twitter and Ustream have become popular, so the feeling of “being there” is important. However, the difficulty with clothing is that there is a time lag between its production and when you see it in stores. But, I think having a place where you can immediately buy the clothes offers a kind of do-it-yourself atmosphere that you can really only seen Tokyo. If you come to the shop you can meet the designers and us, and since we’re planning various events and workshops our hope is that the shop will become a main attraction that you can visit over and over again and will help to create excitement for Fashion Week.

Lastly, tell us about your plans for the future.

Shikama: Nothing’s really been decided, but we want to do various things one project at a time, from client work to our own personal projects.

KIRA: We would like to go overseas as well. That type of expansion will accelerate other aspects so we would like to keep that always in mind.

Tokita: We can move faster than larger organizations, so we’d like to leverage that advantage. By having people from different fields participate in our projects we can give birth to various ideas and networks, and this is something that I believe will become the norm in the future.