Remember the days when one was made to stand on the kitchen table, told firmly not to move a muscle and yet at the same time being made to rotate v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y while Mother, her mouth bristling with pins like a witch who has just devoured a porcupine, adjusted the hem of the garment with a measuring stick? The work of Akira Isogawa makes one wonder why on earth we'd ever bothered with this ridiculous ritual. All it took, after all, was a slight alteration in stance for the whole thing to be askew, and which of us ever wore our clothes while standing ramrod still? In Isogawa's work, hems are 'devil may care'. I suspect they are too well bred to snicker at the measuring stick, but they certainly disdain its use.

There can be few people interested in textiles in Australia who remain unaware of the existence of Akira Isogawa. His rise to prominence in the fashion world is, on the surface, the stuff of fairy tales. In the ten years since Isogawa graduated from East Sydney College his work has become known around the globe, with collections being presented twice a year in Paris and thrice annually in Sydney. Boutiques in London, Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo stock his work. Behind it all, though, are long hours of hard work.

Isogawa does acknowledge the influence others have had on his development, and this resonates in pieces such as a slim, bias-cut, black knit dress, reminiscent of an Issey Miyake work 'Tubed Veil', but at the same time unmistakably 'Akira'. Other pieces hark back to Japan's age-old textile traditions, but make the viewer look again. These garments invite thought and contemplation. His outfits inhabit a nebulous region on the art/design border. They are in themselves complete as objects, yet when worn they take on aspects of the wearer.

A red patchwork skirt becomes a compendium of stories when coupled with the clean lines of the red leather chrysanthemum jacket. The combination of patches in silk, wool and leather, sourced from a multitude of older garments, overdyed in red and appliquéd to a rectangular piece of cloth. The kimono fragments hint at other lives and other stories. The reds are as one, and yet dissimilar, as the various fibres present have responded differently to the dyebath. One of those instances in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

These are admittedly not clothes for the fuller figure. They hang tranquilly and flatly in the space, turning ever so slightly in the breeze, waiting, like Aurora, for warm breath to bring them fully to life. Perhaps there's a fairy tale in it, after all.

Akira Isogawa left Japan for Australia in the mid-1980s and graduated from East Sydney College before opening his own boutique and launching a career in fashion design.