Japanese Dark Avant-Garde: Devoa, The Viridi-Anne and Julius

Japanese Dark Avant-Garde: Devoa, The Viridi-Anne and Julius

Collectors who build a wardrobe around Rick Owens, Ann Demeulemeester or Guidi eventually run into a parallel scene that shares the same palette but almost none of the same history. Tokyo has its own lineage of dark, deconstructed menswear, distinct from the Antwerp and Paris houses that anchor most archive fashion writing. Julius, Devoa and The Viridi-Anne are three of its defining labels. None of the three trained under the Antwerp Six or passed through a European couture house. Their reference points are techno clubs, tailoring apprenticeships, and Japanese textile craft, and the results read differently up close even when they photograph like distant cousins of Rick Owens or Boris Bidjan Saberi.

This piece looks at what is actually documented about each label: who founded it, when, and what defines the design approach, sourced to the brands' own statements and to on-record interviews rather than to secondhand retailer copy.

Julius: techno, goth and the sculptural silhouette

Julius was founded in Tokyo in 2001 by Tatsuro Horikawa, originally as a means of presenting audio and visual art projects rather than as a clothing label. The clothing line grew out of that project and was formalized in 2004, according to the brand's own account on its official store. From the outset, Julius built its collections around a restricted palette of black and grey, which the label describes as symbols of madness and pain respectively.

Horikawa's route into fashion is unusual for a Tokyo designer of his generation. In an interview with SSENSE, he explained that his first clothing work came out of nightlife rather than pattern school. In the mid-1990s, around age 23 or 24, he began making pieces for the techno and drum and bass crews he ran with, starting with a collection based on the science-fiction anime Genma Taisen under an earlier label called Nuke. Before that he worked as a VJ and art director in Tokyo's club scene, producing flyer art and live visuals, including a project cutting up and remixing imagery for a British Murder Boys event (the industrial techno duo of Regis and Surgeon) at Tokyo's Liquid Room.

That background still shapes how Julius is built. Horikawa has said he approaches clothing more as sculpture than as fashion in the conventional sense, prioritizing pattern and shape over color or graphic surface. He calls the guiding idea behind the label a "techno spirit": a refusal of nostalgia and a constant push toward what comes next, applied to garment construction the way it would be applied to a DJ set. The Spring/Summer 2017 collection was built directly around this logic, shaped by the output of the British label Downwards and its co-founder Regis; the Paris runway show for that season featured live performances by Downwards artists. The following Fall/Winter 2017 collection, a rare departure into color for the brand, took its palette from the cover art of Cabaret Voltaire's single "Sensoria," with the show soundtracked by the artist Lotic.

Julius has shown in Paris on and off since the label's international breakthrough, and the studio remains based in Tokyo's Sendagaya neighborhood. In 2020 the brand introduced PERMANENT_JULIUS, an archive line that reissues standard, recurring pieces from across the label's history rather than following the seasonal show calendar.

Devoa: anatomy as pattern

Devoa was founded in 2005 by Daisuke Nishida. According to the brand's designer statement, Nishida brings two distinct backgrounds to the label: tailoring knowledge inherited from his grandfather, and a working understanding of human anatomy developed during an earlier career as a professional wrestler and medical instructor. That combination defines the label's approach to pattern-making, which is built around how the body actually moves rather than around a fixed silhouette copied from a block.

The result is ready-to-wear that reads as tailoring but wears like leisurewear: structured pieces with articulated seams and paneling, cut for mobility rather than restriction. Devoa's collections favor relaxed cuts, muted and organic palettes, and a consistent focus on high-grade Japanese textiles, with everything designed and manufactured domestically in Japan. Where Julius is explicit about its industrial and musical references, Devoa presents itself in narrower, more technical terms: a study of construction and material rather than a scene or subculture.

The Viridi-Anne: object-dyeing and utility tailoring

The Viridi-Anne, generally abbreviated TVA, is designed by Tomoaki Okaniwa, whose name appears on the brand's official store as the designer behind both the main line and DUELLUM, a collaborative capsule and archive line credited jointly to Okaniwa and Juan Kruz. The brand also runs ISO as a separate sub-line alongside the mainline seasonal collections.

TVA's own product catalog is the clearest evidence of its signature technique: a large share of current and archive pieces are described as "object dyed," meaning the finished, constructed garment is dyed as a whole piece rather than dyeing the yarn or fabric before cutting and sewing. Object-dyeing produces uneven, worn-in color and lets a single dye pass hit seams, panels and hardware differently, which is part of why TVA pieces read as aged or field-worn even when new. Combined with the brand's near-monochrome, largely black and grey palette and a consistent vocabulary of military and utility detailing (cargo pockets, tactical vests, belted and paneled outerwear), the object-dyeing process is the closest thing TVA has to a signature.

Verifiable English-language biographical detail on Okaniwa himself is thinner than for Horikawa or Nishida. Multiple retailers and fashion press outlets describe an earlier career and a specific founding year for the label, but those details are not corroborated by the brand's own official channels in the material available here, so they are left out rather than repeated as fact. What can be confirmed directly from TVA's own store is the current line structure, the object-dyeing process as an active, named part of the collections, and Okaniwa's designer credit.

Where this scene fits next to Antwerp and Rick Owens

The overlap in collector base between this Tokyo scene and the Antwerp Six or Rick Owens is real but the lineages do not actually cross. Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann came up through Antwerp's academy system and Belgian tailoring tradition; Rick Owens is a Los Angeles pattern-cutter who built his own vocabulary from bias-cut draping and leather; Guidi is a century-old Tuscan tannery that became a footwear house. Julius, Devoa and The Viridi-Anne share none of that. Horikawa's background is nightlife and AV art, Nishida's is medical and athletic, and Okaniwa's practice centers on a specific dye technique rather than a design school pedigree. What connects the two scenes for buyers is the palette and the silhouette logic, not a shared design lineage: both traditions favor black, deconstruction, and garments built to look worn rather than new.

For collectors already anchored in the Antwerp and Rick Owens side of dark avant-garde, these three labels are a legitimate next step rather than a substitute. They are not currently part of ninesells⁹'s catalog, so this piece exists as reference and context rather than a buying guide tied to specific stock.

Frequently asked questions

Is Julius related to Rick Owens or the Antwerp Six?

No. Julius was founded independently in Tokyo by Tatsuro Horikawa, whose background is in techno and club culture rather than European fashion training. Any resemblance to Rick Owens or Antwerp-trained designers is a matter of shared palette and silhouette, not shared lineage.

What does "object dyed" mean on a garment label?

It means the finished, sewn garment was dyed as a complete piece rather than the fabric being dyed before cutting and construction. This produces uneven, worn-looking color and is a recurring, named technique across The Viridi-Anne's current and archive collections.

When was Devoa founded and by whom?

Devoa was founded in 2005 by Daisuke Nishida, who combines tailoring knowledge from his grandfather with an anatomical understanding of the body developed during earlier work as a professional wrestler and medical instructor.

Sources

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