TOKYO – Having fled Myanmar for Japan with his parents as a child, Mr Shibuya Zarny began his fashion career as a model in Tokyo and went on to make clothes for royalty.
“Fashion is an art that has enabled me to survive,” the designer, whose label recently held a 10-year anniversary show in Bangkok, said.
The runway looks featured nods to South-east Asian design, from leaf and eye motifs to jewellery worn under colourful jackets by shirtless male models.
Mr Zarny’s parents came to Japan as political refugees in 1993 when he was eight. As a teenager, dressing with style became a way for him to avoid being bullied.
His mother first taught him dressmaking, and before long Mr Zarny, with his slim silhouette and intense stare, had been scouted as a model on a dance floor in the capital.
“At the time we had no Instagram,” he recalled, so to see and be seen he would hang out at bars, arcades and novelty photo booths called purikura.
Mr Zarny often went to Shibuya, the youthful district he later took as his first name.
“At that time Shibuya was really dangerous. There was a whole underground scene” with yakuza gangsters, he said.
As his career took flight, Mr Zarny launched his eponymous label in 2011, a year before finally securing Japanese nationality.
The fledgling designer gifted 70 longyi – a traditional garment that ties at the waist – to Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
She wore a lilac one to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, a moment which Mr Zarny said “changed my life”.
‘Brave heart’
Alongside his catwalk endeavours over the following years, Mr Zarny acted as a mediator between Japan and Myanmar.
He even accompanied Japan’s Princess Yoko of Mikasa – dressed in a Zarny original – on a visit there in 2019.
Now, with Ms Suu Kyi detained since Myanmar’s 2021 coup, he is raising funds for others escaping his native country.