By Jonathan Day

Japan's bi-annual fashion week concluded its ninth season on Monday, with a hodgepodge of more than 50 up-and-coming and more established brands and designers, all showcasing their unique, creative percipience for "must-buys" when their Spring/Summer collections hit boutiques and stores around the world next year.

Hoards of fashionistas flocked to Tokyo's Midtown area between Oct. 19 and 25 to check out what Tokyo's fashion guru's have in store for them when heavy wintry layers will give way to lighter, brighter garbs, as the mercury starts to rise next spring.

Tokyo-based Designer Junya Tashiro, a self-taught 'new-kid-on- the-block' in the world of fashion, treated his audience to a collection comprised of virginal-white, cotton, ruffled, knee- length skirts and dresses, worn with white and silver, silk jackets -- sharply cut to accentuate figures and create poise.

One stunning three-quarter length, eggshell-white jacket was finished off delightfully with gold-pockets and double buttons set at chest level, giving the piece a "bespoke" look, yet allowing the jacket to flow and create motion -- simple, utterly chic and a testament to this young designer's ability to fuse cutting-edge fashion, with form, function, grace and elegance. Junya Tashiro will be a name to watch out for in the years to come.

Women's Designer Aguri Sagimori took a different tack to Tashiro, completely opposite in fact -- the 24-year old enigma's collection seemed to suggest that black is, once again, the "new black".

Sagimori, having graduated from the Vantan Design Institute and at her tender age winning both the Prize for Excellence at the New Designer Fashion Grand Prix and the Nagoya Fashion Grand prix CONTEST in 2007, is both talented, relevant and unabashed about her mildly androgynous, single-hued, tailored offerings for S/S 2010.

Single-clasps held jet-black, V-necked, sleeveless jackets together and were coupled with simple, silk boot-cut pants that hung low on the hips, which made for an urban 'biker-girl' look - - minimal, fluid and edgy.

Other pieces from Sagimori included a stunning inky top, which was sheer in places to reveal flesh and solid in others. This piece, that could be worn alone as a dress, clung at the knees one side and mid-thigh the other -- slants and diagonal cuts were quite obviously the direction Sagimori was going with this wonder- piece. The collar was raised on the right and plunged to the left shoulder, in another example of the designer's use of angles. This piece was worn over glistening black pants and boots with silver embellishments.

Men's and Women's designer Ato Matsumoto established his own brand, ato, in 1993 and opened the brand's flagship store in Tokyo's fashion-central Minami Aoyama district. Matsumoto presented in Paris for the first time in 2000 and 2003 saw his first women's collection.

At JFW ato presented the audience with an ensemble of models dressed like the cast of 'Fame' -- the original 80's TV series, not the movie remake released this year.

Matsumoto's a seasoned designer whose collection gave more than a nod and a wink to all that was wrong with fashion in the 80's, yet was fun, fresh, colorful, kitsch and cool. The red, green, yellow, pink and turquoise rubber pants and three-quarter length shorts, some with matching sleeveless jackets, were fun and gaudy, but Matsumoto paired these with ber-cool tailored jackets, fresh- white knitwear with flashes of greens and blacks and vest and tops for men and women that were all loose and airy with double V-necks that plunged for days.

Matsumoto also chucked in a couple of very finely-cut simple, black, leather blousons for both sexes, perhaps not because he particularly wanted to for this collection, but just because he could.

The ato collection was audacious, but Matsumoto understands that you can take cues from 'Charlies's Angles', 'Happy Days' and 'Flashdance', reinterpret them and breathe new life into them by pairing them with contradictory items that offer contemporary street-chic -- paradox isn't a dirty word in fashion.

Fashion week anywhere in the world would not be complete without it's last show kicking off at least half an hour late and the @Izreel show, the conception of designer Kazuhiro Takakura, didn't fail, to disappoint.

It was standing-room-only for a lot of non-VIP's, buyers or press as the curtains were about to be drawn on the final JFW show.

Ambient Balearic tunes filled the pitch-black hall. A single strip of gold embroidered runway was the only visible object -- Takakura seemingly wanted his guests to relax into a slightly meditative state, before he presented.

In fact, bar the shuffling of latecomers, excited whispering and the general pre-show cacophony you get at any show, if you closed your eyes and focused solely on the music, if only for a fleeting moment, you could transport yourself aurally to Ibiza's Caf Del Mar.

@Izreel was all about black meeting silver and it was all about shine and sheen. Silver silk printed waistcoats were worn with matching printed shorts, which also came in a pant version. Shirts were collared and sleeveless and neckties were black and skinny.

Slim, leg-hugging, silver and black silk pants were worn with Takakura's staple silver, Velcro-fastening, futuristic, mid-top sneakers.

One of Takekura's real head-turners was a stunning, bespoke silver silk jacket with a dazzling turquoise embellishment.

IZREEL was launched in 2003, and Takakura gained international recognition following presentations in Copenhagen a year later. Five year on and he's sending his all-male cast down the runway wearing elements taken from samurai armor -- in fact the show is called "MODERN ARMOR."

According to Takakura, "The warriors of old were image- conscious and their decorative armor catered to this. Nowadays men' s clothes are their armor, worn to uplift their spirits."

Full-length, black leg-ins were a prevalent theme throughout Takakura's show, worn under dark-black, sharply cut shorts and knee-length versions were also seen adding a sporty, upbeat dimension to the collection.

Three-quarter length silver printed baggy pants, with a matching flat-cap and the silver mid-top kicks injected some ' urbanism' into the collection and cotton polo shirts with colors that graduated from black to grey to pink added a dash of color and estrogen to this men's collection, as did a simple pink, cotton short-sleeve shirt adorned with pink stars.

The @Izreel Men's Collection featured a number of suits, all tailored, all slim. The coal suits blazed with flashes of pink and silver, perhaps the most striking of all an astonishing piece featuring bold strips of blue, black and aqua-marine.

Not scared to take risks Takakura treated his audience to a progressive collection comprised of form-fitting tailoring that we' ll be sure to see donned by his many aficionados on the streets of Tokyo's Harajuku and Daikanyama areas come springtime.

For most of the fashion world in Tokyo the @Izreel Men's Collection was the climax of the week, closing out a week of collections that many fashion insiders are saying have been the best in Tokyo Fashion Week history -- thanks in no small part to the designers themselves, but also the whole JFW production, which has become better organized and less haughty than previous years.

Japan Fashion Week (JFW) has caught some flak in the past for being a rather disjointed and amateurish affair -- a mere blip on the global annual fashion calendar dominated by the ritz-and-glitz of shows in Paris, Milan, Shanghai, New York and London and the heavyweight designers, brands, models, buyers and media attention these shows beguile.

However, over the past few years the folk at JFW have started to work out a few of the glitches that have been keeping the event in fashion's little league and out of the global limelight.

They've consolidated most of the shows into a single, easily accessible area -- this season saw JFW held in Tokyo's Midtown area, which comprises 370 billion yen's worth (U.S. 3 billion dollars) of office, residential, commercial, hotel, and multi- purpose leisure space -- and all just a hop and a skip away from Roppongi -- the city's world-renown nightspot.

Coupled with this they've (finally) realized that to attract more foreign buyers and media, the whole production needed to be a little more "accessible" to a non-Japanese audience.

This year JFW took another step forward in doing what other fashion shows around the world have been doing bi-annually for decades, using a little commonsense.