Ayako Nagaya, 37, is the president of F1 Media Inc. and the chief producer of Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC), a semiannual entertainment extravaganza showcasing Japanese street fashion, music and a myriad of products, from instant noodles to cars. Staged in Tokyo's Yoyogi Stadium, this one-day fashion festa of all things kawaii (cute) is the brainchild of Branding Inc., a media contents company that runs a number of successful Web portals catering to girls and women. The first Tokyo Girls Collection was created in 2005 as a party event to celebrate the fifth anniversary of one of Branding's Web portals, girlswalker.com, which introduces fashion to 8 million subscribers in their late teens to early thirties. Since then, TGC has evolved into a major cultural phenomenon, attracting 20,000 screaming fans to its shows and even more to its mobile-phone sites. According to Nagaya, girls are crazy about TGC and the numbers prove her right: Within 24 hours of the last show, ¦59 million worth of clothing was purchased online, and the event made an incredible ¦3 billion in advertising revenue.

World recession or not, women always want to look great. That's why we aren't experiencing a downward spiral at TGC. Some brands appear, others disappear, but as long as we keep providing inexpensive, high-quality entertainment and clothes, the only movement we should sense is upward. The world might be getting sick, but Japanese girls are healthy, powerful and fun.

My goal is to be like a great soy sauce! Soy sauce goes well with anything. I would like to be the kind of woman who gets along with everyone and helps make everyone better — just like soy sauce does to anything it is poured on to.