100 Stories1974 The Paris Office

In the 1970s, when fashion and trends were starting to gain attention, Asahi Kasei established an office in the home of fashion Paris. As an apparel fabric manufacturer, Asahi Kasei worked on creating a base in Paris, where fashion originates.

Asahi Kasei has been sharing the latest information on fashion trends and materials with related businesses since the early 1970s. The company started route sales in cooperation with apparel and department stores. In addition to the existing material exhibition, Asahi Kasei held exhibitions featuring different materials and categorized by their use, such as the innerwear exhibition that took place in 1970 and the loungewear exhibition held the year after.

The year after in 1972, in collaboration with the French company Promostyl, which predicts fashion trends one or two years ahead by accurately analyzing fashion information and announces color, design, and pattern plans accordingly, Asahi Kasei widely shared this information with fabric wholesalers and apparel businesses.

Moreover, to expand its marketing functions, in 1973, some of the functions of the Fibers & Textiles Marketing Division were divided and separated, and two new departments were established. The Fashion Development Division was established to develop and sell fashion materials, processing techniques, and production systems of fashion products, and the Product Planning Office was established to gather and offer information on fashion and plan products. To further enhance these activities, the Paris office was established in 1974. It was the first time in Japan for a major petrified and synthetic fiber to dispatch resident employees to Paris to gather information on fashion.

A collection that features the Pewlon™ acrylic filament was announced in Issey Miyake’s 1974 Paris collection, and this office was used as the sales office of the acrylic fiber produced in Ireland. At this time, information about Première Vision was also gathered as fashion information. Première Vision is the world’s largest international trade fair held twice a year in Paris. It is an important event because the trends presented in Première Vision, such as colors and materials, greatly influence the trends of the fashion industry.

Moreover, the Product Planning Office collected information about what it called “fashion direction,” which included colors, materials, and lifestyle trends it obtained from Paris, and released it to fabric-related media. In addition, not only did it announce this information to fabric businesses, but also to clients who are engaged in the automotive and painting material industries.

Asahi Kasei was the first chemical manufacturer in Japan to decide to dispatch resident employees to Paris. Sharing the latest information gathered by the resident employees on site not only played a role in developing Asahi Kasei’s upstream fabric business but also brought attention to its downstream business.