Kiko Kostadinov first visited Tokyo over ten years ago, when he was just finding his feet as a student at Central Saint Martins. ‘I was all alone with my Blackberry, trying to figure out how to locate stores and restaurants,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘I felt like I was on a different planet. Coming from London, I thought I was prepared for how hectic and chaotic a city can be, but I was very wrong.’
A decade – and many, many visits – later, and the Japanese metropolis is no longer a mystery to the Bulgarian designer. Now, it’s something of a second home for his cult London-based brand. Kostadinov has chosen the city as the location for his first ever permanent physical fashion store, which opened last week in the heart of Shibuya, just a stone’s throw from the beautiful chaos of the scramble crossing and Harajuku’s Cat Street, where the city’s alternative youth have gathered for decades.
