Hollywood’s go-to designer opens boutique at Rustan’s
Hollywood’s curvier celebrities like Oprah flock to Tadashi Shoji, whose sizing goes up to ‘Queen,’ or size 30, for red-carpet couture they can’t get from other, snootier fashion houses.
Two Hollywood actresses — Octavia Spencer and Mo’Nique — have won and claimed their Oscars while draped in his gowns.
Celebrity-dom’s five “K”s — Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Kate Beckinsale, Kelly Osbourne, and Kaley Cuoco — have all flaunted his designs on the red carpet. Cuoco even wore his bridal pantsuit to get married in.
And former US First Lady Michelle Obama is a regular client; one of her most celebrated looks was an elegant purple number that she wore during a White House state dinner for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Truly, Japan-born, Los Angeles-based designer Tadashi Shoji is Hollywood’s go-to when they need a red-carpet stunner. And it’s not just Hollywood celebrities or Washington, DC wives who seek out Shoji’s brand of glamour, but women from all over the world.
In the Philippines, according to Rustan’s executive vice president Anton Huang, Shoji has built such a large, loyal clientele over the past quarter-century that the logical next step was to open a boutique in Rustan’s Makati.
“Our partnership with Tadashi has spanned 24 years of Rustan’s 65-year history,” Huang said. “He has a very strong following here, and his fashions appeal to a mixed group of women of all ages.”
That may be because Shoji’s design philosophy is as democratic as it gets: “Any woman is entitled to become beautiful,” the designer says. “My motto is not just (ages) ‘17 to 70,’ but also all nationalities, all kinds of figures. Why are you going to discriminate against women over size 12? For our ‘queen sizes’ we do XL, double X and triple X — size 28 or 30.”
No wonder Hollywood’s curvier celebrities like Oprah, Rebel Wilson and Queen Latifah are all flocking to Shoji for red-carpet couture in sizes they can’t normally get from other, snootier fashion houses.
Octavia Spencer, who not only won Best Supporting Actress for The Help in his gown but also landed on all the Best Dressed lists for the hand-beaded, stretch-tulle number he crafted especially to flatter her figure, has become a lifelong fan and unofficial ambassador.
“Octavia… that dress made my name go up,” Shoji says.
#METOO SEXINESS The dresses on the racks at Rustan’s Makati’s Tadashi Shoji boutique would similarly turn heads at any red-carpet event in the world. Currently in-store is his fall/winter 2018 collection, which the designer says was inspired by the #MeToo movement.
“Another designer told me, ‘Sexual-harassment victims are women wearing provocative dresses, so it’s their fault,’” he says incredulously. “I said, wait a minute: a women’s designer is saying that? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not women’s fault. So I said, we’re doing women’s clothes and women power.
“Until last year most fashion was soft, like lace and tiered dresses, so why don’t we do sexy dresses, which our company started on?”
I ask him what his definition of “sexy” is, and he replies, “Sexy for me is not vulgar. I don’t do vulgar dresses.”
Indeed, what’s on offer in the store is classic Tadashi Shoji: body-conscious dresses in comfortable and forgiving jersey, lace, and stretch tulle, many of them sparkling with matte-finish sequins. “Women can wear what they please,” he says. “I try to leave something to the imagination.”
Shoji, who has a keen sense of what women want and need, has been thoughtful enough to incorporate shape wear into some of his dresses in the past, but for this season’s low-cut gowns and wedding dresses he’s provided his own line of low-cut shape wear in the store.
“A woman’s body is almost like a canvas for painting, and painting is all about proportion,” says Shoji, whose background is in art, having apprenticed with modern artist Jiro Takamatsu. “Same thing in designing women’s clothes: it’s proportion.”
He says he’s wanted to be an artist ever since he was a kid, drawing and painting from a young age. “I couldn’t make it, and accidentally became a fashion designer.”
Finding Japanese culture too confining, Shoji “ran away” from Japan as a youth and traveled to the United States on a tourist visa. “I loved the United States so I wanted to stay there,” he says.
In Los Angeles he eventually enrolled in a fashion school where he learned draping, and had his eureka moment: “Oh, this is sculpting with fabric!” he exclaims. “I didn’t know the meaning of ‘darts’ before. So if I didn’t learn, I wouldn’t have stayed in the school and I wouldn’t have been a fashion designer.”
Today he spends half the year in Shanghai, where he has an atelier (China is his biggest market in Asia), four months in LA, and two months in New York City, where he shows at NY Fashion Week. Every season — four times a year — he designs 100 different styles, doing bridalwear and even kidswear (daughters can twin with their moms in dresses that are every bit as lacy, luxe and sparkly), and distributing them through 700 locations in 40 countries around the world.
Next year, he will introduce a new line targeting a more millennial market, which he’s currently showing to buyers in his showroom, but right now he’s happy where he is.
I ask what he would say to critics who accuse him of designing “safe, celebrity-approved” eveningwear, and he laughs delightedly. “Does that mean I don’t do avant-garde design? Because if I do avant-garde, I think not many people can wear this, so it’s not my philosophy or my taste,” he says. “If I’m a ‘safe’ celebrity designer, that’s fine with me.”