Twice a year, the global fashion industry turns its eyes to Japan for Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo, the city’s premier showcase for avant-garde design and meticulous craftsmanship. Beyond just a series of runway shows, the platform serves as an exciting, vital stage for deep-rooted textile traditions like indigo dyeing and hand-spinning to meet modern streetwear and technical tailoring.
This Autumn/Winter season, centered around the week of March 15-21, was marked by a wave of milestone returns and high-profile debuts. Across major hubs like Shibuya Hikarie and intimate, unconventional venues, the season’s collections moved away from the expected to embrace more personal, conceptual narratives.
From yushokobayashi’s dreamlike meditation on memory, yoshiokubo’s pulsating rendition of running culture and FDMTL’s striking ode to Japanese denim, here are our favorite shows — and designers to watch — from Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo 2026.
Kakan
Making its runway debut this season with the Tokyo Fashion Award under its belt, Kakan is quickly emerging as one of the city’s strongest distinct sartorial voices. Founder Hana Kudo defines fashion as a form of performance art — a notion clearly demonstrated by her latest collection. Moving between undulating, meticulously netted sculptural pieces and sleek silhouettes with felted textiles, the collection strikes the perfect balance between romanticism and minimalism. The final look is a showstopper — a delicate, cobweb-like shawl slowly shed and draped across the runway like the last trace of a dream as it fades.
Drawing from her dual background in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins and Fashion Design at Instituto Marangoni, Kudo launched her brand in 2024, placing hand-spun knitwear at its core. Often crafted from raw, undyed wool, Kakan’s garments venture beyond traditional knitwear, balancing a high-concept sensibility with made-to-order ready-to-wear.
Yoshiokubo
Celebrating over two decades of technical mastery, yoshiokubo continues to redefine the boundaries of activewear through a lens of couture-level craftsmanship. For A/W 2026, designer Yoshio Kubo presented “Beyond Running,” a conceptual exploration of everyday life as a winding, long trail.
Set against the thumping beats of a “running playlist,” the collection is a dazzling combination of earth-toned high-performance gear, two-way construction and vibrant harnesses and jacquards inspired by the Tarahumara people of Mexico, known for running through mountainous terrain in traditional dress. The show culminated in a literal run; the music shifted to a BPM as local runners joined models on the runway donning the merch of a fictional running team, “Ghost Run Club.”
FDMTL
Since starting out in 2005, FDMTL designer Gaku Tsuyoshi has spent two decades obsessed with the complex art of Japanese denim. For A/W 2026-27, he focused on the theme of “Pre-Singularity” — a response to our current AI-driven world. Tsuyoshi continues to prove that human hands bring a soul to denim that machines cannot replicate, a sentiment bolstered by the powerful energy of a live performance by Kenji Kawai (the composer behind the music for the animated film Ghost in the Shell) and the folk song group Nishida Shachu.
Cast in an ethereal blue light emanating from the huge, moon-like lantern above, the models wore various combinations of distressed denim and boro patchwork that felt both worn-in and avant-garde. Most interestingly, the collection blended traditional Japanese silhouettes — like haori coats and hakama pants — into modern streetwear. Another cool detail was the footwear on display: split-toe tabi sneakers made in collaboration with Vans.
Yohei Ohno
After a two-year hiatus from the runway, Yohei Ohno returned with a milestone collection inspired by the characters of the late David Lynch’s films. Ohno was particularly struck by Blue Velvet, drawn to the way the characters are depicted simply as “living, breathing (and inherently lovable) human beings” regardless of morality. Moving away from rigid perfection, the collection “Ideal Palace” embraced a sense of beautiful disorder, referencing the surrealist architectural masterpiece built by postman Ferdinand Cheval the in Hauterives, France.
The collection’s surrealist influence is evident, and pairs seamlessly with the designer’s signature sculptural construction: a bubble-gum pink minidress embellished with glinting hand mirrors of various sizes, skirts with ribboning hems that seem to defy gravity and slightly unsettling wool felt caps with distorted holes in collaboration with H.at. You can also spot “pansies in non-existent colors” by artist Yuka Mori, and a striking, cobalt-blue dress patterned with a motif of two women by Sakura Sugiyama, adorned with glowing bulbs.
Mukcyen
For designer Yuka Kimura, the brand mukcyen is a vehicle to explore the friction between our public roles and private selves. She explores this theme this season through the figure of Marie Antoinette: as a queen, wife, mother and a symbol of her era. Referencing aspects of 18th century fashion and Rococo styles, Kimura experimented with exposed corsets, coats with knightly power shoulders, original floral jacquards and delicate knit dresses, often juxtaposing rigid silhouettes with raw, frayed edges and baroque lace.
A brand launched to celebrate the complexity and fluidity of human identity, mukcyen is an abstract play on the Chinese pronunciation of the designer’s surname. Born in Tokyo in 1998 with roots in Fujian Province, China, Kimura is a graduate of Bunka Fashion College and worked for a domestic designer before launching mukcyen in 2024.
Yushokobayashi
Yushokobayashi’s A/W 2026 Collection “Void” unfolded as a quiet, dreamlike meditation on the themes of death and loss. To set the stage, the runway was transformed into an immersive landscape of hand-crafted paper flowers. Against this ethereal backdrop and musician Yoyou’s dreamlike live vocals, models drifted through in whimsical, gossamer-like garments — an interplay of paper-like materials, soft knits and layered patchworks in muted pastel palettes. Oversized ribbon headpieces added a touch of playful distortion.
This deeply intuitive approach to design is a hallmark of yushokobayashi, a brand that finds beauty in vulnerability. Designer Yusho Kobayashi often draws upon personal reflections, as well as classical mythology — specifically the story or Orpheus — to explore the human tendency to look back at what has been lost. Rather than treating death as a dark or frightening concept, the brand frames it as a constant, quiet presence that shapes how we perceive memory.
Viviano
For his A/W 2026 show, Viviano Sue took over the Yodobashi Church in Shin-Okubo to debut “Portrait of Her, Unnamed.” Venturing beyond the neo-romantic look people have come to associate with the Viviano woman, Sue focused on the idea of identity before it gets labeled; the collection blends a range of aesthetics, from classic, sharp-shouldered black coats and bold patent leather sets to the brand’s signature high-drama ruffles. A standout look pairs a knit auburn jacket with cross-stitched roses with a dusty-pink tulle skirt and black ankle boots.
Leaning into the brand’s ethos of “chaos flickering faintly among the flowers of order,” the runway also showcased hat maker Kijima Takayuki’s bright, sporty flight caps and playful helmet-like hats inspired by bob wigs. These witty accessories and theatrical makeup looks were fused with Viviano’s expert tailoring to create a collection that feels highly referential yet fresh.
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Updated On March 27, 2026
