At Tokyo Fashion Week, the battle for cutest collection is big business; new contenders for the title frequently emerge, but this season’s clear winner is Koché’s Christelle Kocher. The French designer restaged her Fall 2019 collection atop Shibuya’s Tsutaya bookstore tonight, interspersing pieces she already presented in Paris with a series of new looks created in collaboration with Nintendo’s Detective Pikachu series, including bright soccer jerseys, logo-covered baseball caps, and a series of flirty separates in Pikachu yellow.
A fan of Pokémon’s manga incarnation, Kocher wanted to highlight the series’ mass appeal with her designs. “Pokémon is already something people are attached to across generations,” she said postshow. “I used to play when I was a kid, but now it’s evolved into a whole new story.” The popularity of the PokémonGo phone app, 122 video games, and a multitude of films and television programs all based on the same concept means that anyone born after 1996 is likely to have experienced a version of the tale. Ubiquity can be a hindrance, but after riffing on Planet Hollywood T-shirts and concert T-shirts in previous collections, Kocher was unfazed. “This was very special,” she said. “The connection between younger people, older people, and [someone like] me who has always been a big fan of Japanese culture.”
Kocher’s admiration extends beyond cartoons. Having visited Japan five times in the past year, she’s immersed herself in Tokyo’s design scene. In preparation for the Shibuya show, she worked with local patternmakers, had 25 looks created in Japan, and culled her cast of cool kids from the streets near the venue. The all-in approach was something she felt was necessary. “It was important to present this collection in the center of Tokyo, in the Shibuya Crossing and in an electric place with so much culture—fashion, books, music,” she said. “We’re on the top of the world, and you can feel the tension.”
If the idea of Pikachu popping up during fashion month still seems left of field, the collection arrives at a time when Pokémon’s parent company is feeling experimental. Last year saw the launch of a streetwear collab with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment Design, followed by a limited-edition drop for 10.Deep that referenced the hapless villains of Team Rocket. The video-game giant’s other big gambit is a Detective Pikachu movie starring Ryan Reynolds as a wisecracking and live-action incarnation of the character. Far removed from the monosyllabic cutesy version most are familiar with, the project represents a tonal shift that Hidenaga Katakami, the Pokémon Company’s senior director of animation and new media, says opened the doors for out-of-the-box marketing. “This film is edgier for us—it’s not a cartoon, and you have Pikachu doing things people who grew up with the animation have never seen him do. It make sense to align with a brand like Koché.”
