Could Japanese wrestling become fashion’s new favourite sport?

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It may have been the third day of Frieze, but Thursday night, the London fashion community gathered at a very different kind of event. Queues snaked around East London streets as editors, influencers and megafans turned out for Sukeban — a new Japanese women’s wrestling league launched by designer Olympia Le-Tan and her brother-in-law Alex Detrick in 2022. Inside, the wrestlers walked a runway into the ring to resounding cheers, wearing bespoke costumes designed by Le-Tan, makeup by world-famous makeup artist Dame Pat McGrath and merch from buzzy London streetwear label Aries. This was not a regular wrestling match.

Thursday night followed a string of sellout events across US cities New York, Miami and LA, each attracting different fashion and beauty partners that have so far included makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench, industrial designer Marc Newson, music artist Saweetie, independent fashion brand Soft Skin Latex, milliner Stephen Jones, visual artist Ayako Ishiguro, fashion label Yagi Boy Collective and cult nail artist Mei Kawajiri.

From Loewe’s collaboration with Studio Ghibli on its ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ collection to Jimmy Choo x Sailor Moon, luxury fashion brands are increasingly inspired by Japanese culture (and subculture). At the same time, fashion labels are reaching for increasingly niche sports to build cultural cachet with subsets of dedicated consumers. Could Japanese women’s wrestling become fashion and beauty’s new favourite sport?

A canvas for creativity

It certainly has the credentials. Sukeban’s internal team is also a who’s who of fashion and beauty leaders. Le-Tan has been a fashion designer for decades, first for her eponymous label and now for her new homeware brand, The Hotel Olympia. Revered London-based artistic director Jamie Reid Studio designed Sukeban’s bold, electric pink graphics, while manga artist Sakana Kouji has contributed drawings for promotional materials.

“Sukeban is entertainment. It’s also sports, but mainly, we use it as a platform to get all these different creative people involved. That turns it into something much bigger and more interesting for people who are not necessarily wrestling fans at all,” Le-Tan says. “Some people are very interested in the fashion side. Some people are interested in beauty. A lot of people are interested in the action — it becomes a cultural exchange.”