Fashion designer Sarah's setting trends in Tokyo
There may be nearly 6,000 miles between them but a fashion designer from Preston is causing a stir on the high streets of Tokyo.
Sarah Locke has buyers for some of the biggest names on the Japanese high street interested in stocking clothes from her label on their shelves.
The 29-year-old university graduate has already courted major suppliers at a European fashion show and visited them in the Far East.
Now, she is jetting back out to the land of the rising sun next month to pick up more stockists.
Sarah said: "I never went out of my way to design clothes for the Japanese market, I think it is just my style that attracts them, they like traditional British clothes with a quirky twist and that is what I do.
"They tend to stock a lot of their clothes from Europe and the Japanese buyers always make a beeline for us when we are at shows over here.
"I guess since I have been out there I have been influenced by their culture, it is a two-way thing, they influence me as much as I influence them."
Life on the Japanese fast lane is a far cry from working for a bridal shop in Preston city centre, her first job having graduated from BA (Hons) Fashion course at the University of Central Lancashire and the Royal College of Arts in London five years ago.
But, after a brief stint in employment she decided to be her own boss and opened an office in The Watermark, on Ribbleton Lane, where she remains today.
The first Japanese trip last year, part-funded by UK Trade and Industry and UK Fashion Exports, got Sarah thinking about opportunities on the opposite side of the world.
She said: "It is an amazing place, people out there are really friendly and everything is done at a really fast pace.
"What I am having to get used too is when their spring/summer and autumn/winter collections start and finish, so we can adapt to when buyers have the budgets.
"March is a good time for that, so I am hoping the next visit will be equally fruitful as the first."
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Thursday 29 July 2010
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