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Meet Emiko, a supercool granny taking the Japanese fashion industry by storm. At age 93, she’s got the spunk and energy of a six-year-old, and she’s positively adorable as she models her granddaughter Chinami Mori’s colorful creations.
Chinami is a fashion designer from Osaka, who specialises in Saori – a freestyle hand-weaving technique that produces playful, unpatterned garments. She uses lots of bright, colorful fabric and yarn to create whimsical clothing and accessories like hats, scarves, bags, tops, and more at her studio. Saori is based on the idea that anything goes and what’s important is heart. “There are no rules,” she explained. “I can weave as freely and colorfully as I want.”
Emiko, who Chinami describes as her “favorite person in the world,” would stop by at the studio every day just to spend time with her. Eventually, she started trying on a few of the clothes and accessories that her granddaughter made. And Chinami realised that she’d found her perfect model for her designs. So she got Emiko to pose and took a few photographs, later posting them on Instagram. The response of her fans was overwhelmingly positive and the 93-year-old grandmother has become a regular feature on the designer’s Instagram account, attracting new followers with each new photo she posts.
Emiko has obviously taken a liking to her new role, and it shows in her photos – her smile and childlike energy are infectious, and the colorful clothing compliments her innocent charm. She’s earned over 10,000 followers from all over the world, with people leaving her comments in Spanish, Persian, Arabic, Japanese, English, French, and Turkish.
Chinami is also very happy about her grandmother’s success as a model. “I make grandma happy, and that’s just so much fun for me, too,” she said.
We’ve seen senior fashion models find success online before, like Gunther Krabbenhoft, a dapper gentleman i his 70’s, or 80-year-old Liao Dezhong, an amateur designer who models his own creations, but at 93, Emiko is definitely the oldest.