To the sound of howling wind, a model emerges in a head-to-toe snow print wearing a delicate collar of cherry blossoms nodding on long, slender stems. Then, to the melancholy strains of a live string orchestra, others follow in puffed coats so intricately puckered and gathered that models look encased in origami cocoons. The collection, the fourth by Issey Miyake's heir apparent Naoki Takizawa, creates an effect so mesmerizing that, for a moment, even the most hard-nosed store buyers forget niggling practicalities like what happens if you sit while furled in those brilliantly colored coats? "It was so beautiful, it made everyone cry," Susan Koller, fashion editor of the French magazine Self-Service, tells the designer after the show last month in Paris.

Critics and store buyers have come to view fashion shows by Japanese designers—including Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo for Comme des GarCons—as moments of calm and intellectual stimulation in fashion weeks too often filled with mundane clothes and headline-grabbing shock theatricals. Yet despite the dramatic impact of the great Japanese designers over the past 20 years, they remain niche players in the industry. Although no one disputes the artistry and creative brilliance of the major Japanese talents, young Americans and Brits are the ones who have been named to take over the great Paris fashion houses. Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, has a succinct explanation for the phenomenon: "It's because their clothes aren't commercial enough: they're too difficult to wear."

Although Japanese designers like Miyake and Hanae Mori appeared on the international fashion scene in the 1970s, it was a decade later when Paris really took notice. The era was one of excess: Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler were focused on enhancing shoulders with exaggerated padding; Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent were creating rococo fantasies of beading, silk and ruffles. Amid the froufrous and frills, Kawakubo and Yamamoto rolled out their collections and set Paris on its ear. The clothes were revolutionary, shocking—stark, unstructured and overwhelmingly black. Bewildered critics dubbed Kawakubo's first Paris collection in 1981—with its frayed seams and misplaced armholes—"Hiroshima chic." This was a moon shot away from the padded-shoulder and pastel look paraded on Dallas. In 1985, Bernadine Morris, then a fashion critic of the New York Times wrote: "Their presentations were so powerful and their clothes so radical that some feared they would change the face of fashion irrevocably." In fact, they did.

Those early collections inspired a new generation of Western designers. The now commonplace use of all black, the deconstructed look and asymmetry can all be traced back to them. Yet 20 years later not much has changed. The influence of the same big three—Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto—continues to dominate. And the same Japanese design houses are still regarded as sources of inspiration rather than models for how to build luxury brands. "They are so independent, they are icons in the fashion world," says Franka Sozzani, editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue.

For all the praise heaped upon the first generation of Japanese designers, only rarely has the legacy of avant-garde experimentation been passed down. Rei Kawakubo's promising protégé Junya Watanabe is one of the few who lives up to expectations. He showed a futuristic punk look in Paris that most critics loved though it struck some as retro. Even Miyake's Takizawa, one of the most successful of the younger generation, has not strayed far from the established aesthetics of the house. Ask a European or an American fashion editor to name a fresh, up-and-coming Japanese face and you get only silence. A Japanese fashion editor will tell you which Japanese designers are showing—Junko Shimada, Atsuro Tsuyama and Yoshiki Hishinuma—but as Kaori Tsukamoto, fashion director for Vogue Japan, admitted in Paris: "I'm not going to those shows."

Instead, this year young Belgian designers like Olivier Theyskens and Veronique Branquinho ran with the avant-garde baton and were the must-sees. Designer Walter Van Bierendonck, a professor at the Flanders Fashion Institute and one of the Antwerp Six, the original Belgian designers to gain fame with their initial London showing in 1986, says: "Of course, the Japanese had a huge influence on us."

One explanation for the Japanese generation gap could lay in the tastes of fashionable Japan. Although Japanese consumers buy the vast majority of Yamamoto, Miyake and Comme des GarCons merchandise, they are fascinated with what the Western world is wearing. The stock of international fashion conglomerates like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the Gucci Group can rise or fall depending on the strength of the yen and the Japanese economy. With good reason: Japanese shoppers account for some 32% of Gucci and more than 45% of Louis Vuitton brand sales. Japanese consumers, says Gucci CEO Domenico De Sole, "like brands that are truly international."

Come fashion-show time, Japanese publications feed consumers at home blow-by-blow reports of the trendy items worn by Western fashion editors. Outside the Christian Dior show, a black, chauffeur-driven Mercedes pulls up to the curb. As the door opens, a flock of Japanese photographers (mostly male) and reporters (mostly female) gathers around the sassy blonde passenger, dressed in stripes and wearing sneaker-styled stilettos. This is not Kate Moss or Gwyneth Paltrow. This is Emer Paul, fashion editor of U.K. Glamour. "Can we get your picture please?" someone asks. Before she can reply, the photographers begin snapping—zooming in for close-ups of her bag, sunglasses and shoes, always the shoes. "My shirt is Martin Margiela, my skirt is Miu Miu," she recites without prompting. "Who makes your shoes?" someone asks. She can't remember and slips off the sneaker pump to let them look at the label. Before the shoe is back on, they're after their next target. It's flattering to some, but not others. "They're relentless," says American Vogue's Wintour. They have to be. Reporters from a dozen similar magazines wait in front of each big show.

The aggressive tactics of the Japanese paparazzi stand in stark contrast to the behavior of the designers. After her show, Rei Kawakubo doesn't come out for the customary bow. Journalists looking to go backstage to congratulate her are turned away. She also rarely grants interviews, saying the clothes should speak for themselves. This season her collection featured bulky bras worn over dresses, corsets left undone, pants that bared the bottom when models moved. The reviews, all glowing, used phrases like "whatever it meant" and "whatever she was trying to say." Says Richard Buckley, editor of Vogue Homme: "Like other artists and creators, there is a point when you have to come out and speak to help people understand."

Takizawa does greet the mostly Japanese well-wishers after his show; two days later, while waiting for Akira Onozuka's Zucca show to begin, he goes virtually unnoticed. Compare that with the presence of Tom Ford, creative director of the Gucci Group, who caused major gridlock at the Les AnnEes de Pop opening at the Pompidou Center. "They don't have the sex factor," Self-Service's Koller says of the Japanese designers. "Fashion today is about being a pop star."

This reticence may be part of the reason no Japanese designer has been named to take over any of the great Paris fashion houses. Admits Gucci's De Sole: "We look at people who are most successful in the market." LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault says of the Japanese, "They are further out. It's easier to get in touch with a Dutch designer or a British designer or even a New York designer when you are in Paris." Arnault did include Kenzo Takada in his group until Takada's retirement last year—when Frenchman Gilles Rosier took the helm of the Kenzo line.

For the time being, it seems, fashion mavens, editors and retailers will continue to weep in adoration over the beauty and artistry of Japanese design, but look to the European collections to see what to buy.

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