Iki-iki: Japanese for 'lively and vivid' (and not at all icky)

The website of designer Noriko Shimada and her clothing line Iki-Iki isn't giving much away, beyond a series of pictures and an explanation that the name means 'lively and vivid' in Japanese. Fortunately, these clothes speak for themselves - bold, brash colours, simple outlines, huge images, and fabrics that hark back to the sixties and seventies.

It's in childhood that you can get away with wearing patterns and colours like these, before insecurities about body shapes and which colours do and don't suit you begin to set in. So I read with interest that Iki-Iki, currently designing only for girls, plans to expand not only into boys' wear, but also into clothes for mums and dads. Will they manage to carry the same sense of joy into their adult lines? I hope so.