http://takuya-angel.com/information/about_Takuya.html

Takuya Sawada

Story of Brand / Source of Inspiration:

The brand Takuya Angel was officially born in Osaka in 1995, but the brand’s story started two years earlier when designer Takuya Sawada started a shop named Angel in Osaka’s Shinsaibashi area. The shop sold handmade items made by 100 Osaka based designers, artists and photographers. Sawada also produced events and fashion shows.

At that time, Japanese fashion was dominated by influences from the US and Europe. “There was no fashion based on Japanese culture at all,” recalls Sawada. The seeds to do something about this were sown when Sawada met a Shinto Priest in 1994. The encounter unleashed an admiration for Japanese culture. Many Shinto Priests shared obscure oral traditions with him that are not even found in books. “I thought that I should find a way to combine Western clothes with Japanese kimono to help bring Japan back from all the Westernization.”

As it happens, Sawada’s wife Akiko had a collection of kimono from the early Showa Period (1926-1989). “To make a skirt I mixed parts of my wife’s kimono up with parts of used suits that I had intended to remake for my shop Angel.” This bustle type kimono skirt became a big hit and was worn as street fashion by youths in Osaka.

“The people in Osaka gladly accepted my new style of clothing and that’s how Takuya Angel came into being as a brand blending Japanese and Western styles.” To create a new brand name for this new line of clothes, Sawada combined his first name, Takuya, with the name of his shop, Angel.

People wearing Takuya Angel fashion were soon called “Angelers” and were widely covered by Japanese news media as a new social phenomenon. The fashion was even featured in school text books and the term “Angeler” was added to dictionaries as a neologism. Tokyo trendsetters soon discovered Sawada’s creations as well, and in 1998 Takuya Angel shops were opened at Marui in Tokyo’s trendy Shinjuku and Shibuya districts.

The following year, Sawada designed the tour costume for well-known Japanese actress and J-pop singer Yuko Miyamura, who performed one of the voices in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

In 2001, a Takuya Angel shop was opened in Harajuku, Japan’s center of youth culture. Soon, Japan became too small. After collaborating with Tokyo Decadance for Prêt-à-Porter Paris 2007, Sawada became active overseas, participating in fashion shows and performing as a DJ. He toured around Europe, and has recently been active in the US as well. In 2012, his creations were displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Great Britain, the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design.