Hiroaki Ohya

After graduating from Bunka Fashion College, Tokyo, in 1992, Hiroaki Ohya (b. 1970, Kumamoto) joined the Issey Miyake Design Studio before going on to create his own brand in 1996. Ohya incorporates futuristic and poetic narratives into his creations, which are often seen as works of art. Incorporating references to popular culture, including Japanese manga comics, he often adopts critical distance when it comes to the superficiality of the fashion world. Wizard of Jeanz (1999) is directly inspired by the film The Wizard of Oz (1939) and is composed of twenty-one books that unfold into garments. Coming across collections of old books in a flea market, he was struck by the fact that books are an enduring and stable way of conveying ideas across time. In opposition to the transitory nature of fashion, he decided to create ‘book-clothes’. Once opened, these reveal a folded and hidden unexpected world that purposely plays on illusion. Once unfolded, denim fabric turns out to be polyester printed with an image of fabric, denim, fake pockets, fake buttons and fake seams. Some of these pieces involve the use of cleverly folded, very fragile red materials. Folk (2003–04) has its origins in the same book-based principle but differs in that each volume represents an element that is added to others to construct the final piece.