When boy meets girl: Designer Akira Isogawa on his androgynous, eighties-inspired collection

In a career first, Australian fashion designer Akira Isogawa rides the ’80s wave with a unisex collection that blurs gender identity.

“This collection was designed to be more gender neutral,” says a softly spoken Isogawa, who moved to Sydney from Japan in 1986 and started studying fashion at East Sydney Tech a few years later.

Titled Vicious Beauty, the 25th anniversary resort collection plays on the notion of what it means to be masculine and feminine.

Under Isogawa’s watchful eye, fashion is where boys will be girls, and vice versa. It’s also the first time Isogawa has experimented with an era that harks back to his teenage years – when new romantics, big hair and bold prints ruled the landscape.

“I use motifs from vintage 1980s textiles my friend Diane, a seamstress, gave me when I first arrived in Australia,” he recalls, of the box of fabrics he unearthed while searching for inspiration.

“The fabrics sat there and I contemplated what I would do with them.”

Isogawa is one of Australia’s leading fashion designers and leans on avant-garde and abstract forms to deliver silhouettes built for layering. His pieces are feminine without the frills, sexy without overt skin exposure, and he chimes on his Japanese past with occasional nods to kimono life.

He is notoriously shy, a quietly spoken master of his trade who works from his studio in Marrickville and recently showed the collection at Melbourne Fashion Week.

“Fashion evolves – that’s the nature of it and, as designers, we need to modify,” he says of keeping his vision true to his DNA, but open to new forms of expression.

“I am mindful to not alienate our market audience, but this time I felt there was a real need to do a unisex collection to show another side of the brand.”

Soft pastels and subtle prints drive Vicious Beauty – a collection steeped in ruffles, sequins and organza.

If you asked Isogawa 10 years ago if he considered the ’80s a vintage era, he would have convinced you otherwise, but these days he’s OK with that salute.

Growing up in Kyoto, where his family still lives, Isogawa says he would rather forget his own fashion faux pas of the time.

“I became quite fashion conscious in the ’80s and started buying clothes for myself,” he says.

“I was quite embarrassed by what I looked like and avoided it as a point of reference in my own work,” he adds.

But he’s made peace with that past.

“In 1980-81 I was listening to a lot of underground Japanese bands and British new-romantic rock. I only wore black and grey – it was a very dark period in fashion – it’s what everybody was doing so it was a social norm you could say,” he says.

“It took coming to Australia to embrace colour and I’ve filtered that influence into my collections.

“The light in Australia was instantly noticeable to me, the bright sky and lightness all around. It deserved to be replicated in colour.”