My name is Yoko.

I was born in Saitama, Japan, neighbouring county to Tokyo with the nickname "dasaitama" which means lame or wacky...! Lots of people in Saitama are commuters to Tokyo. Dreaming and practicing to become as cool as Tokyoites led Saitamaites to be overly fashion conscious. Yes, I was one of them and as a result, I moved to Europe in 1999 to further finesse my fashion taste, specifically, on footwear.

Why footwear? - you know, fashionistas look at shoes first when they meet new friends. I had to find good shoes first!

While overcoming my English language "disability", I gained some insight into shoemaking at Paul Harnden in Brighton, even though I was only helping to stitch up some shoe bags the beauty of the hand made shoes I touched everyday made me very happy and gave me the sensitivity to appreciate "hand made" pieces.

During my study at De Montfort University I grew my curiosity towards technology and unconventional ideas. I developed several conceptual footwear by hand and one of them was called Compact Clog. Inspired  by the concept of foldable travel slippers, this was a fashion clog that folds into two, giving a very unconventional look. I hand made them with vegetable tanned natural leather and sheep fur, wet moulded and hand-stitched together. This crazy sounding shoe made several award winning moments.

Winning of the international competition, ‘Un Talento Per La Scarpa’ (‘A Talent for shoe’) by Sanmauroindustria and Cercal in Italy brought a light in my path for footwear design career. After graduation from De Montfort University, my spirit was full of excitement living in Italy to take the scholarship at Cercal and to attend the internship in Sergio Rossi.

I fell in love with Italian artisan workmanship. I already had my love affair to anything hand made, but the Italians showed me so much of their pride and appreciation to fine aesthetics.

Returning to the UK, I carried on enjoying the Italian artisan at the legendary designer, Georgina Goodman where I gained my luxury brand experience including Alexander McQueen and Casadei. It is a beautiful feeling when the product  we designed create a momentum in the fashion industry.  The time with Georgina certainly is a highlight of my designer career, creating conceptual designs for catwalks to commercially successful designs. I was thrilled to receive Georgina's mentoring towards creativity and the importance of design language and creating the brand icon as well as training my skills to be a chameleon with my design to adopt to various brand's handwriting. My favourite memories are the all-nighters leading up to the catwalk show. Exhausting but nothing brings the team together more than these do-or-die moments.

In 2011 my curiosity for technology came back and I joined FitFlop. It was a big change from the fashion world, but I had the greatest fun developing new technologies with a Dr in Biomechanics and developers in Asia. I am very proud to see my fashionista friends and my non-fashionista families enjoying the shoes we produced and complimenting how comfortable & cool they were. So my passion for fashion didn't end here. Not only giving flavour of fashion in the footwear range I challenged myself further by incorporating fashion illustrations to showcase how to wear the new designed footwear range for commercial use and that, was a whole lot of fun!

While leading the design team at FitFlop, I saw a great shift in the team spirit from feeling embarrassed to proud to be part of world-class design team. I learnt that the most effective way to create a good team is to create great products together so the team feels proud of what they've achieved and to have designers from other brands wanting to join.

During the creative process I enjoy drawing ideas by hand, rendering by hand, creating 3D mock-ups by hand, and, most importantly, I love working in team spirit. Whether managing a team, or simply being part of one, it is a great feeling when you over come Himalaya-high challenges together.

My fine balance of experiences in luxury, comfort and hand-made footwear industry as well as fashion illustration skills and the spirit of working as a team is quite an unusual mix and I am glad colleagues and friends enjoy what I enjoy doing.

Winner of the Top Shop Accessories Award at

London Graduate Fashion Week - UK

Winner of the ‘Un Talento Per La Scarpa’ (‘A Talent for shoe’) by Sanmauroindustria and Cercal - Italy

Winner of the Student Footwear Designer Award at Drapers National Footwear Awards

Winner of the Lineapelle Young Designers Award - Italy

Voted Best Prototype of A.N.C.I. ‘I Love Italian Shoes’ competition at MICAM - taly.