Have you ever wondered why Japanese design is so damn good? Here is the answer – the Japanese do not differentiate between fine arts and design like we do in the West. They treat both the artist and the artisan equally. This is the way Tomoaki Okaniwa, the designer behind the young label The Viridi-Anne, thinks. Born in Nagano, he moved to Tokyo as a teenager to study oil painting, but then switched to fashion. He launched The Viridi-Anne in 2000. Clean tailoring prevails in Okaniwa’s work, but upon closer inspection subtle details like curved seams and seamlessly incorporated extra pockets give the clothes a sense of vitality that is not aggressive, but rather subdued. “The main concept of my work is based on the beauty of simplicity and the effects of time,” Okaniwa says. “I want to create garments with roots in the ideal of ‘wabi-sabi’ that incorporates the aesthetics of imperfection, incompleteness, and the effects of natural processes, but I want to mix it with a modern vision.“ Okaniwa’s clothes possess a good mix of European and Japanese cultures. His latest collection is based on Picasso’s Blue Period. We asked the designer to answer a few questions about his work.

How did you become a fashion designer?
I began my creative life as a painter. I was inspired by modern art in general, and one Japanese artist, Leonardo Fujita, in particular. He was an oil painter who lived and worked in Paris. His use of colors, fine sense of balance and choice of subjects were extremely beautiful.