[Interview] Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo

meanswhile focuses on the functions that clothing holds and proposes contemporary everyday wear based on elements of outdoor, military and workwear. Founded in 2014 by designer Naohiro Fujisaki, the brand began taking part in overseas trade shows in 2015 and won the professional category of the New Designer Fashion Grand Prix in 2016, attracting attention in Japan and abroad from early on. This October, as a TOKYO FASHION AWARD 2020 winning designer, he presented a large-scale runway show at Rakuten Fashion Week TOKYO 2021 S/S. We spoke with Fujisaki, who continues to move steadily forward.

When did you first aspire to become a fashion designer?

Partly because my father was an art teacher, I had always wanted to do some kind of work that involved making things. But I also had a sort of rebellious feeling of not wanting to follow the same path as my father, so when I finished high school I chose fashion, which I had long been interested in, and studied clothing at university. After graduating I went to work for an apparel company, but at the same time I started making the clothes I wanted for myself, and once they had become something solid, I launched the brand half on impulse.

Please tell us more about the brand concept, “As everyday wear, clothing is a tool, not a costume.”

I’ve always liked outdoor and sportswear, and I was interested in the functional side of clothing. Clothing has two aspects: one as an everyday tool and one as a costume. In the fashion world I belong to, an industry system centered on Europe has created trends and constantly encouraged people to acquire new things, as if clothes had an expiration date. As a consequence, the fashion industry is now running into a major wall. That is exactly why I want to deliberately eliminate the costume aspect of clothing and propose it as a tool.

So it contains a strong antithesis to the current state of the industry.

I feel that quite a few people have a shallow image of the word “fashion,” and I think that image has been built up over a long time by the people involved in the industry. The fashion industry is a world where something considered cool until last season can suddenly be called uncool the next. At a time when apparel is said to be a declining industry, if we keep doing that, it will surely be hard for new people to come in, and I want to find some way to change the situation.

Where do you find inspiration for making clothes?

Everything around me can be a source of inspiration, but nature is especially frequent. Every natural thing has taken its shape for a reason. By considering in my own way why something took that shape, I make all kinds of discoveries, and I think observing nature has given me the habit of thinking about the reasons behind function.

So the brand’s creations, which take apart and reconstruct the structures and functions of clothing, come from that way of thinking.

Menswear in particular has a strong tendency to reproduce things that have been made for a long time, adapted to the present. But in an age when lifestyles and means of transportation have changed dramatically, I think it’s strange for things like pockets to be exactly the same shape as 100 years ago. I see fashion as an expression of people’s style and inner selves — the lifestyles and ways of thinking of their time — so I want to keep exploring new things while always being conscious of that.

As people’s lifestyles and values change due to the pandemic, where do you think fashion is headed?

If a world came where we could not go out at all, the role of clothing might change, but it’s hard to judge at this point. Speaking personally, during the period when we were forced to stay home, I struggled a lot with how much meaning there really was in creating new things. In the end, I came to feel that what I had worked on so far and what I had planned to do were not wrong, so I want to keep focusing on the function of clothing and continue making clothes with the same concept.

You recently opened the brand’s first directly operated store. Do you have any goals for the future?

When I launched the brand, I drew up a rough business plan for about seven years ahead, and right now is exactly the seven-year mark. With life changing so drastically at this moment, I’m trying not to think too far ahead. In any case, what I had been aiming for from the start was not to hit a certain level of sales or show at Paris Fashion Week by a certain date, but to influence customers’ way of thinking through the brand’s philosophy. To achieve that, I hope to keep working steadily.