by Eugene Rabkin
"Like most brands, Visvim, the cult Japanese label created and designed by Hiroki Nakamura, has its Parisian showroom in the Marais. As it happened, the windows of the apartment I rented during this past men’s fashion week looked directly at its entrance. Each morning, as I buttered my baguette, I watched Visvim’s team hook up a huge Japanese paper lantern besides the showroom’s entrance, the only signage it offered. The semiotic message was two-fold – it indicated Visvim’s unabashed Japanese roots and also served as a kind of a secret handshake. You only got it if you knew about it.
“You only get it if you know about it” has been Visvim’s modus operandi since the brand’s inception when, in 2001, Nakamura made his first product by superimposing a moccasin upper onto a sneaker sole. The “FBT” shoe was an instant hit and its hybrid nature has become symbolic of Visvim, because at its core Visvim is a hybrid. The brand is pretty much impossible to classify – it’s neither purely fashion, nor streetwear, nor workwear, but occupies an elusive space in-between. And Nakamura’s aesthetic influences are a mashup of American and Japanese cultural markers that put together seem to make no sense at all, which is precisely Visvim’s draw in the age of postmodern dressing.
Growing up in Japan, Nakamura watched Westerns, and like many imaginative boys he was fascinated with cowboys and Indians. When he grew up he spent some time in Alaska. He began collecting American workwear and became a skilled flea market hound in the process. At the same time he was fascinated with the traditional Japanese clothes-making techniques. The only thing that seemed to unite Nakamura’s interest in these different things was their rich past that he relentlessly romanticized. For him the time seemed to stop in 1960. But it wasn’t just the aesthetics of the past that he liked; it was also the way things were made – durable, rugged, with a sense of care and honesty that avoided cutting corners. Visvim is Nakamura’s attempt to recreate that ethos."
Full article on SZ-Mag
"Like most brands, Visvim, the cult Japanese label created and designed by Hiroki Nakamura, has its Parisian showroom in the Marais. As it happened, the windows of the apartment I rented during this past men’s fashion week looked directly at its entrance. Each morning, as I buttered my baguette, I watched Visvim’s team hook up a huge Japanese paper lantern besides the showroom’s entrance, the only signage it offered. The semiotic message was two-fold – it indicated Visvim’s unabashed Japanese roots and also served as a kind of a secret handshake. You only got it if you knew about it.
“You only get it if you know about it” has been Visvim’s modus operandi since the brand’s inception when, in 2001, Nakamura made his first product by superimposing a moccasin upper onto a sneaker sole. The “FBT” shoe was an instant hit and its hybrid nature has become symbolic of Visvim, because at its core Visvim is a hybrid. The brand is pretty much impossible to classify – it’s neither purely fashion, nor streetwear, nor workwear, but occupies an elusive space in-between. And Nakamura’s aesthetic influences are a mashup of American and Japanese cultural markers that put together seem to make no sense at all, which is precisely Visvim’s draw in the age of postmodern dressing.
Growing up in Japan, Nakamura watched Westerns, and like many imaginative boys he was fascinated with cowboys and Indians. When he grew up he spent some time in Alaska. He began collecting American workwear and became a skilled flea market hound in the process. At the same time he was fascinated with the traditional Japanese clothes-making techniques. The only thing that seemed to unite Nakamura’s interest in these different things was their rich past that he relentlessly romanticized. For him the time seemed to stop in 1960. But it wasn’t just the aesthetics of the past that he liked; it was also the way things were made – durable, rugged, with a sense of care and honesty that avoided cutting corners. Visvim is Nakamura’s attempt to recreate that ethos."
Full article on SZ-Mag
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