Individually they run two of the most coveted - and contrasting - labels in fashion, Sacai and Kolor. But the Japanese design couple Chitose and Junichi Abe find some common ground in their airy Tokyo home. Every so often, Chitose Abe finds herself folding a load of laundry in the modern home she shares with her husband in the outskirts of Tokyo, when she comes upon a garment she's never seen before - a long, V-neck cardigan, for instance, or a pair of cropped trousers - and thinks, "Oh, this is what he's doing!" Both fashion designers with rabid cult followings - she, with Sacai; and he, Junichi Abe, with Kolor - the couple rarely compare notes when it comes to their collections. Neither has ever been to their spouse's runway shows (more a matter of familial commitments than a lack of interest), and you'll never see them wearing a piece from the other's collection. In person, they are perfectly complementary. Chitose, with her rhinestone-adorned nails and blingy accessories, is outgoing and chatty; Junichi, dressed in dark pants and a simple white T-shirt, is more serious, with a low, measured voice. One morning in late July, Junichi pours cups of iced oolong tea as Chitose scoops up their toy poodle Coro, a tiny gray fur ball belonging to their 15-year-old daughter, Toko. Later, Junichi will be the one cuddling the dog as his wife makes coffee in the immaculate open kitchen. "We share the housework," Junichi says, adding that they also take turns leaving their respective studios early to have dinner at home with Toko. While their relationship seems a near-equal partnership, Chitose says there is one area that she has stayed out of, leaving the decisions up to her husband: the design and interior decoration of their custom-built wood-and-stone house, which was completed three years ago. Unlike many Japanese homes, theirs is spacious and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto a large balcony overlooking a wooded area. The space is almost hauntingly spare, a geometry of blank surfaces offset by a few neutral accents and pieces of art. Aside from the presence of a doggy bed in the center of the living area, a visitor might imagine he'd stumbled into a model home. "My own space is really cluttered with a bunch of different things," Chitose says. I like it to be more jumbled. The shelves in her home office are jammed with a colorful menagerie of dolls, toys and other kitsch objects, like a stuffed toy whose body parts are shaped like various cuts of meat, bought at a ceramics shop in Paris. The couple met 24 years ago while working for Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, as part of a four-person design team charged with starting the Junya Watanabe brand. Elements of Kawakubo's deconstructed aesthetic are apparent in both of their collections. Sacai is known for splicing together different fabrics and seemingly incongruous design elements. The fall collection includes velvet dresses melded with trench coats, plaid skirt suits grafted onto hunting jackets and leather motorcycle jackets made new with fur sleeves. Chitose is an expert at mixing high and low, masculine and feminine, traditional and modern. Today, as usual, she is wearing Sacai: a heather gray sweatshirt dress with a flouncy skirt of narrow blue and white stripes at the back, accessorized with navy, red and aqua blue high-top sneakers. Her looks have won important admirers, among them Anna Wintour, Suzy Menkes and Karl Lagerfeld, who not long ago called her the most interesting designer of the moment. Chitose credits her love for startling juxtapositions to the seemingly endless contradictions of her home city. Tokyo is often described as an enigma - a place where the world's top luxury brands sit alongside wacky boutiques; where the latest technologies coexist with ancient Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. "There's such a variety of things interlaced with each other, and I think that's really interesting," she says. Her main goal is to make clothes that are uplifting. "By wearing our clothes, I want people to think that it was a really happy day," she explains. Junichi, by contrast, takes inspiration from within, letting new ideas bubble up "from the emotions that come up unconsciously," as he puts it. His designs, while also displaying extraordinary craftsmanship and an impressive sense of texture, are considerably more understated. Softly tailored silhouettes, made from custom-developed Japanese fabrics, riff on standard men's wear styles, employing a contrasting band of color on the bottom of a jacket, or designing a trouser's waistband in an opposing fabric. While they don't view one another as direct competitors - even though Sacai also includes men's wear - increasingly their lines are finding their way into the same stores. One wonders if there isn't perhaps a collaboration in their future. "I don't really like the things she likes," Junichi says. So I think we both know -  Chitose laughs. "We'd argue," she says definitively. We're both quite strong-willed, so I think it would be difficult to reach a mutual understanding. Other things we can agree on, but when it comes to work we both become very different people.