Title

Yoko Ohara interview, 2025 April 5

Contributor Names

Ohara, Yoko (Interviewee)

Ferguson, James (Interviewer)

Date

2025-04-05

Description

Yoko Ohara is known in Japan as the ‘Mother of Fashion Business’, because she introduced the term and the concept of “Fashion Business” for the first time to Japan in 1968 through the translation of the “Inside the Fashion Business” textbook.

Since then, she had made it her life-work to help the Japanese fashion industry grow and develop talented professionals for the industry through ASAHI-FIT Seminar (1970-1997), and IFI Business School, established by Japanese Industry in 1998.

Recently, her activities are more focused on development of executive women, establishing the NPO, Women’s Empowerment in Fashion, and serving as President/chairperson (2014-2023).

Yoko received her Fashion Buying and Merchandising A.A.S from FIT in 1967 under a Fulbright Scholarship. She served as a member of FIT’s Central Program Council (1998-2002), and as the Chairperson of the Central Program Council in 2002. Yoko was inducted into FIT’s Fashion Buying & Merchandising Hall of Fame in 1987, and was the recipient of FIT’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. She is the President Emeritus of FIT Alumni Association Japan.

Type

Moving Image

Oral histories

Subject

Clothing trade

Business

Business enterprises--Japan

Fashion merchandising

Women in community organization

Women--Societies and clubs

Japan

Rights

In Copyright

This video was produced by the Fashion Institute of Technology ("FIT") and is the property of FIT. FIT expressly prohibits the copying, displaying, or uploading to a website of any portion of this video, except for the purposes of fair use as defined in the copyright laws, without express written permission from FIT. This video has been made available online by the Fashion Institute of Technology Gladys Marcus Library strictly for research and educational purposes. If you are the copyright holder for content in this video and have any objections to this work being made available online, please notify us immediately at [email protected].

Identifier

FIT Repository ID: aod_oh_000019