Mikio Sakabe Stages Swimsuit Show at La Foret Harajuku for Tokyo Spring 2027

Mikio Sakabe presented his Tokyo Spring 2027 collection at La Foret, the teen-oriented mall in Harajuku, framing it as a "swimsuit show held in a shopping mall." Japanese gravure magazines — mildly erotic publications marketed to men, featuring wide-eyed models in lingerie, swimwear or cosplay — supplied the collection's unlikely reference point. The designer described the appeal of staging a fashion show inside a Japanese fashion mall as bright and showy yet faintly sad, and the runway was deliberately strewn with discarded coffee cups and drink cans to reinforce that reading. Bikinis alternated with Sakabe's signature deconstructed oversized tailoring and shirting, slashed and layered into chaotic shapes, some trimmed with frills or floppy appendages resembling bunny ears. Every model wore the eye-covering, helmet-like wigs that have become his signature over recent seasons; all also wore bubble-soled sneakers from Grounds, his footwear project founded in 2019 that now employs roughly 100 people worldwide. A former Antwerp classmate of Demna, Sakabe is known for drawing on underground culture and reshaping it into ironic yet desirable fashion, with a substantial following across Asia. The collection circled the wish to escape reality and the impossibility of doing so, setting gravure's hyperreal superficiality against the mall's banal setting. The closing look, a half-worn shirtdress pierced with silver slits, read as portals to another universe.