Fashion

Environmentally Friendly Attire Showcased at Tokyo Fashion Week; Brand Displays Clothes Dyed with Low-Water Technology

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, September 4, 2024

Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo for the spring and summer 2025 season opened on Monday, with about 30 fashion brands from home and abroad taking part in the official program alone.

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Models walk during Telma’s runway show at the Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Monday.

One such brand is Telma, an up-and-coming Japanese brand who kicked off the week with a runway show at the Shibuya Hikarie culture and shopping complex. The brand collaborated with Kyocera Corp. to produce environmentally friendly fabric for making long coats and other items featured in the collection unveiled at the show.

Fabric dyeing traditionally requires a huge amount of water, and water contamination from its runoff poses a serious problem. But new technology apparently allowed the company to reduce the volume of water needed to dye 1 kilogram of fabric from 153 liters to just 0.02 liters.

“We’ve been able to make progress on creating products that are gentle on the environment,” said Terumasa Nakajima, 42, the designer who founded the brand.