Hello.
This is Noguchi from CASANOVA&CO.
The 2025SS season is in its final stages.
We've reached the climax, with only a few items left to be delivered.
Given the timing, I'd like to introduce someone who operates on a different timeline than the typical bi-annual collection cycle.
This is an event I've personally been very much looking forward to.
FUKUBORI
ORDER EXHIBITION
2025.06.21 (SAT) >>> 2025.06.29 (SUN)
Due to the impact of his activities and his base of operations, some of our loyal customers might already know him.
His name is Shinsuke Kawahara.
His profession is patternmaker.
He primarily engages in commissioned work, creating patterns based on requests from companies and brands, making him, so to speak, a "pattern expert."
To borrow Kawahara-san's own words, he is strictly a pattern expert within the many processes of clothing creation, which is a division of labor, and the realm of "design" is outside his expertise.
This is Kawahara-san, who looks at his own position within this division of labor from a bird's-eye view.
His life's work is a research activity called "Fuku wo Horu" (Digging for Clothes).
And the brand that has materialized from this research is "FUKUBORI."
This time, CASANOVA&CO will host an exhibition of the activities of "Fuku wo Horu" and an order exhibition for "FUKUBORI."
A few months ago, with the help of someone connected to us, we visited Kawahara-san's studio.
The location is Kojima, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture.
It's a 45-minute door-to-door journey from my home.
It's more like a field trip than a business trip, haha.
With my heart pounding in anticipation, just like a field trip, I headed to Kawahara-san's studio.
The first thing I saw were the activities of "Fuku wo Horu" and their output.
I'll elaborate on the activities of this "Fuku wo Horu" tomorrow, but to put it very simply:
"It involves deconstructing vintage denim and military wear, and conducting various observations."
That's what it is.
However, this work is not simply about disassembling clothes and analyzing their shapes; it's about meticulously and carefully extracting the time and human emotions trapped within the depths of the seams.
He not only applies his technical perspective as a pattern expert but also reads and records the historical background of when a garment was made and the emotional state of the sewer, even down to emotional aspects, as he carefully unravels each stitch.
The ability to contemplate what lies deep within the seams, something that cannot be acquired through mere skill or experience.
This is Kawahara-san's true brilliance.
While the act of deconstruction itself can be mimicked, I believe this particular aspect cannot be imitated or taught to others.
That's why he transforms those traces into a tangible form, clothing called "FUKUBORI," so that they can be communicated to people.
In other words, in the process of his destructive activity, he reads the flow of time and human emotions from each stitch, and replaces it with another value as a means to transmit it to people anew.
However, if you think about it calmly, dismantling vintage clothing with a market value of hundreds of thousands of yen surely requires a great deal of resolve.
This isn't just about the cost; it's because dismantling clothing that is valued in the market—in society—is tantamount to destroying that value.
So, Kawahara-san was initially scolded by many people, haha.
However, as the intensity of his activities increased, the new value born from deconstruction began to be understood by people.
The activity of "Fuku wo Horu" involves carefully disassembling vintage wear—clothing that has ceased to flow with time and can only connect to the past, not the future—meticulously organizing each element, and rewinding the spring.
I'll introduce more details tomorrow.
And one of the new values that can connect to the future, produced as something we can wear today, is "FUKUBORI."
The concept is to create garments solely from "ecru" fabric, based on information read from each stitch.
However, Kawahara-san's design is not incorporated into it.
The clothing faithfully adheres to the base vintage wear, without any arbitrary modifications.
Only the bare minimum of edits are made to enhance the garment's completeness.
Every detail, including those unnecessary in modern times and even internal stitching specifications invisible from the outside, is reproduced.
This is an ultimately fundamentalist approach to garment making, so it's not about modern or beautifully patterned clothing.
However, the sewing of FUKUBORI, which is strikingly beautiful and executed with precise consciousness and understanding, is, in a sense, an anomaly within its fundamentalist stance of not deviating from the base garment, and I believe it is FUKUBORI's greatest charm.
I think I'll be able to introduce the actual products in about two days, but they are truly amazing.
Please pay close attention to the balance of the stitching in relation to the patterns and specifications.
...And that's all for today.
Tomorrow, I'll provide more details about "Fuku wo Horu."