A good vintage: Sport these
Miki Fukai has had the kind of career most fashion students would kill for. She worked as both a costume designer and stylist in her native Tokyo before moving to London to assist Justin Oh, and she graduated from Central St Martins' MA course with distinction.
Her first nomad-inspired collection for Autumn/Winter 2003/4 reconstructed Adidas tracksuits into sexy dresses and shredded military jackets to within an inch of their already long lives.
'I liked the idea of gypsies who don't have many belongings and have to keep their clothes forever, so I took casual garments and recreated them into one-off pieces,' Miki says of the clothes that got the attention of Sex And The City stylist Patricia Fields and won instant stockists in London, Japan and New York.
Now on-schedule and sponsored by Topshop and the British Fashion Council's New Generation Award, her more commercially aware Spring/ Summer 2004 collection was enough to tempt a weary fashion pack out of bed early on the last day of London Fashion Week to watch models in outsized jogging shorts and cropped sweat tops pace the catwalk to Nancy Sinatra's Some Velvet Morning.
Victoria line
This time exploring vintage sportswear and crossing it with Victorian undergarments, Miki managed to make support crotch leggings, wrestling catsuits and bandage mini dresses - in marl grey, sky blue, sunny yellow and tan - look sexy.
'I wanted to make it really light and easy and use lots of pale colours. It's quite a relaxed, sporty collection you could wear to the cafè or wherever.'
It would take a brave girl to model one of her glove-leather hand-woven dresses down the local greasy spoon. Question is, are you one of them?
Stockists: 020 7923 1711.
