Reconstructing Japanese tradition
into contemporary garments
that carry it into the future.

We respect the material,
the hands that made it,
and the time it carries.

Fabric from Japan / Culture for the World

The moment you put on a piece that resonates with your own sensibility, everything responds — the place you stand, the space around you, the person beside you. When your heart dances, the hearts around you ripple too. Your emotion, in other words, leaves its mark on the world.

That is the power fashion holds. With this belief, waname designer Mizuki Kato distills the singular radiance of each fabric — every one different in material and weave — into a contemporary style.

From the Writer

A kimono tailored by artisans over long years carries a beauty so delicate it takes your breath away. Yet the sad reality is that most of these beautiful textiles have nowhere to go but to be discarded.

In a society that demands rationality in everything and is forever pressed for time, have we not forgotten something important?

Once, we Japanese lived with gratitude and affection for everything around us — nature, meals, clothing, all the things of daily life. The kimono is the finest example: expressing the passing seasons and the hours of the day through color, material, and pattern; worn close to the body; mended again and again as it frayed, and treasured.

In today's society, where diversity is celebrated, the kimono — each one showing a different face — is a wonderful garment for expressing individuality in every shade. As a form that carries Japan's history and tradition to our richly individual present, and onward into the future, it has now been given new breath as a shirt jacket.

As the Taisho-era poet Misuzu Kaneko wrote, “Everyone is different, and everyone is good.” In an age of uniformity and simplification, perhaps what we need now is the love that dwells in kimono made by artisans who poured their souls into them — however unreasonable that devotion may seem. And in waname’s garments, recast in contemporary form, I felt that very spirit.

熊谷月希