Japanese wrestling likely isn’t the most natural choice for your look when you start up a new fashion brand. The sport (entertainment?) is a kind of a mix of martial arts and American-style wrestling — and certainly nothing like sumo.
Hardly the ingredients for some new apparel, right?
But then if you are a young clothes designer just graduating from fashion school in Tokyo, perhaps you think differently.
Stylist Yukihiro Teshima (25) came up with the killer idea with a friend and set up Yukihero to sell men’s and women’s wear inspired by Japanese pro wrestling (or puroresu).
Some of their garbs are essentially just t-shirts and other clothes with wrestling motif designs — but other times they go for a full outfit riffing on the theme, including masks.
They held a fair in Harajuku last June and sold out of the 300 garments they had prepared. Though Japanese wrestling, with its elaborate masks and cult following, is very much a man’s game, apparently almost two thirds of their customers were women.
They also made a splash at the Tokyo New Designer Fashion Grand Prix fashion show in November.
The company running the brand is predicting sales for March 2013 of around 10 million yen (US$110,000), of which around sixty percent will be Yukihero wrestling fashion.
5 Comments
Where’d these photos come from?
@Zach
From Yukihero’s website (linked in the post) and Facebook photos.
Website says ERROR. Can anybody help me contact Yukihero? Need to speak with them ASAP about BIG business in the USA!
@MitchyB
Their website has apparently changed and with no re-direct in place. Try their Facebook account:
https://www.facebook.com/yukihero.prowrestling
COOL