Tokyo  - Asia's young fashion designers are excited to expose their creations to the region's fashion capital Tokyo and eager to plant seeds for future business opportunities.

"I consider Japan as Asia's fashion capital," Pablo Mendez III of the Philippines said on Wednesday at JFW International Fashion Fair in Tokyo. "I admire the aesthetics of the way [Japanese] people put dresses together."

The Japanese capital is hosting the 19th JFW International Fashion Fair which started Wednesday, at a convention hall Big Sight Tokyo, drawing 730 companies from 15 nations and regions from around the world.

The three-day trade fair, which invites more than 30,000 visitors including buyers, provides an opportunity for the designers of fashion-related products to present themselves to the global market and also hosts a contest for up-and-coming designers.

In cooperation with Tokyo's metropolitan government, the biannual fashion fair also invited young and promising designers from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam to network especially with Japanese buyers.

Mendez was one of the nine hopeful designers invited to present their collections. The designer closed his workshop in Manila for three months to prepare for the big day, he said.

As a strategy to lure Japanese buyers, 32-year-old Mendez incorporated Filipino materials such as pineapple leaves and banana fibres with Japanese techniques in his "Variation and Innovation" Fall-Winter 09 collection.

In his country, Mendez said, designers receive no government support, unlike his Japanese counterparts. He is struggling to promote his brand.

Japanese department stores recently began to search for new styles and original products in an effort to come out of the consumption doldrums existing designer brands suffer, according to a Takashimaya department store fashion coordinator.

"I see the best match created here," said Yuki Sato of JR Tokai Takashimaya Co. "There are interests from all directions to get connected in the hub of Asia's fashion."

India's Nitin Bal Chauhan was eager to establish business contacts in Tokyo for his brand, which he started in 2005. The designer dreams of a store lined up with Gucci, Channel or Louis Vuitton in Tokyo's high-end Ginza district.

"I see that Tokyo is the place of 21st century and new age," the designer of the Conditions Apply collection from New Delhi said.

He established himself in India and is now eager to be accepted by the Japanese public, and eventually to use Tokyo as a springboard to the rest of the world.

Although he was disappointed by the limited Japanese winter outfits in black, grey and brown, the 29-year-old designer still believes that "young Japanese want to express their originality in their attire."

Japanese consumers are regarded to have a high fashion sense, organizers of the event say, adding that their intention is to exercise that sense for Japanese consumers to select and send out other Asian designers to the global market.

To achieve that goal, organizers hope not only to have outside designers succeed independently in Japan, but also to inspire young Japanese artists, and vice versa.

"Our aim is not only to build Tokyo as a fashion hub of Asia but also to expand a network of Japanese and Asian designers," Kenji Yamazaki, senior director of Japan Fashion Week Organization said. "Fashion has no borders. It is important for Asia to become a birthplace of trends." (dpa)