The biggest fashion festival in Japan “Kobe Collection”.

On February 26th 2011 “Kobe Collection 2011 SPRING/SUMMER” was held in Kobe World memorial hall to announce the new spring/summer clothing line.
Kobe Collection is a fashion event that has been held twice a year since 2002, it is the herald of the real cloth event that is currently being held in various places like the Tokyo girls collection.

This theme is “Freedom”. To fight any challenges without running away, the freedom one wins is the one’s very own freedom achieved.
This event’s brand line up consisted of 28 national, 11 international, and an estimate of 100 models took the run way.

Let’s simply introduce what the day was like.

To the World memorial hall we take the port liner from Kobe/Sannomiya station, arriving there an hour before the grand opening, there was a long line of young girls in front of the ticket booth. Everyone had their best fashion, seemed to be perfectly ready for combat. Around the hall there seemed to also be model scouts, therefore it seemed it was possible to be scouted any time.
When entering the hall in spite of it being before the opening, the hall was already filled with heat, and an atmosphere with anticipation.

The Kobe Collection stage started with Jun Hasegawa holding a flag with “Freedom” on it. And the hall heated up at once. This collection’s MC was Joy and Jun Natsukawa.

Yet a fashion event’s exciting part is the secret guests. Talents often seen on television such as Aki Hoshino, Komori Jun, Tsubasa Masuwaka, and more appeared at the event. With a different taste, Hello Kitty DJ, and Masatoshi Hamada also were invited.
Between the fashion stages, lives and auditions were also done, entertaining the audience. For advertising the movie “Runway Beat”, starred actors and actresses Koji Seto, IMALU, and more also appeared. They walked the runway with the original costumes used in the movie. Furthermore the FUNKY MONKEY BABYS that sing the theme song for the movie also performed. Being able to listen to the song live, the hall was filled with great harmony.
The cheering amongst the audience was louder when the good-looking male models made the stage rather than when the female models appeared.

The Kobe collection is a 4-stage system, having viewed on the 1st 2 stages, it was an event filled with the heat of the young generation of girls. Seeing the girls at the standing seats gazing upon with their fierce glances was impressive.
On April 16th 2011, it was made official that there would be the 5th event held in Shanghai. It is decided that Natsuki Kato, Marie, and Japan’s top models, and AKB48 and more will be making an appearance. Based on the rapid economic growth of Shanghai/China, it is said that Japan will be sending its girls fashion. It is very exciting to see how the young generation in China will react. The Japanese young fashion that is gaining attention from outside of Japan, jumping out of Japan, it seems to be that the sending will start from Asia to other foreign countries.