For journalists and valued customers, the Tokyo Collections are all about the spectacle of the shows. For buyers from Tokyo's department stores and boutiques, they are epic spending sprees -- business gambles founded on knowledge and experience laced with intuition.
At this year's fortnight of Spring/Summer collections that just ended, Tokyo's hottest young designer, Jun Takahashi, came hot-foot from his critically acclaimed debut show in Paris to showcase Under Cover -- his much-hyped label that everyone just had to get a look at.
Buyers from more than 30 stores nationwide duly flocked to the Minami Aoyama venue. With appointments at regular intervals, groups of two or three first watched the collection video. Then, clutching clipboards for their order sheets, the impeccably fashionable teams viewed the clothes on the rails -- all the while tapping away at calculators before snapping up what they could.