The Best Japanese Brands
Your definitive Spyplane Guide to Japan's coolest clothesmakers
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The B.L.I.S.S. List — a handy rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to socks — is here.
There’s a trove of rugs, cushions, lamps, ceramics and more in our Home Goods Index
Real quick —
New Spyplane shoes are incoming. They’re called the Moss Wanderers, and they’re a collaboration between us, Helsinki’s Tarvas and Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty Worldwide.
For each pair, a single piece of repello suede is folded & stitched to create the upper, wrapped in rubberized leather, and then set on a low-profile Vibram sole.
They’ll be available in person on Monday Nov. 10 at Ven.Space in Brooklyn, Neighbour in Vancouver, Rendez-vous in Paris, Nitty Gritty in Stockholm, Understory in Oakland and Maidens in Tokyo. They hit those shops’ sites Thursday Nov. 13. And they hit the Tarvas site on Friday Nov. 14, with an early-access window for our Classified Tier subscribers.
If you’re in NYC, come to our launch party at Ven.Space on Thursday Nov. 13, from 6 til 9 p.m.
More details on the shoes, how they came to be, how they fit, etc., next week.
Now for today’s main event —
Japan makes the world’s greatest clothes. There are, of course, many fantastic labels we love that design and produce clothes elsewhere. But if you had to pick one country responsible for producing more Spyplane-certified slappers right now than any other, there’s no contest — it’s Japan in a landslide.
This has been true for a minute among Mach 7+ sauce connoisseurs. But over the past few years, awareness of Japanese excellence in garment-craft has ramped up to unprecedented levels among Cool Clothes Enthusiasts generally. Now an ever-expanding array of great Japanese labels are commanding the interest and devotion of an ever-expanding, increasingly international cult.
What is going on?
The story is, partially, a happy one: More and more people want simple, ingeniously made clothes that they’ll be able to wear for years. And “simple and ingeniously made” is Japan’s specialty. From time-honored textile mills to experimental dye houses to artisan workshops and factories, there are tools, techniques and skills still preserved and practiced in Japan that have all but disappeared everywhere else. It’s no coincidence that some of earth’s best non-Japanese lines — among them California’s Evan Kinori, Germany’s Polyploid, Canada’s James Coward and Australia’s Man-tle — produce nearly all their clothes in Japan, using Japanese fabrics.
Other parts of the story are more ambivalent. The yen is weakened and, not unrelatedly, there’s an unprecedented economic pressure on Japanese makers to open themselves up to a global clientele, and push into the western market.
The upshot is that there are a bunch of great Japanese lines where, just a few years ago, if you wanted their clothes, you needed to either buy a ticket to Haneda or use a proxy service — and now these lines have become easier to find outside Japan than ever, landing in more shops with every season.
It’s gotten to the point that you need a guide to keep up.
Today we’re dropping that guide.
Yes! We’re excited to introduce Blackbird Spyplane’s Definitive Guide to the Best Contemporary Japanese Clothing Lines Out — and where to find them beyond Japan’s borders.
Men’s lines, women’s lines, unisex lines: In this guide you’ll find a ton of excellent labels making great things across apparel, eyewear, shoes, socks, and bags.
This is a massively intel-rich companion to the beloved Spyplane Japan travel guides we’ve published for Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, Naoshima and more.
Enjoy!
— Jonah & Erin
Check out our monumental new list of the 50 Slappiest Shops across the Spyplane Universe.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Our Cool Mom Style Guide is here.
We don’t run ads, we refuse gifts, and we don’t use affiliate links when we cover new clothes. We do use them for one-off secondhand finds on eBay, Etsy and The RealReal, plus books on the independent bookseller Bookshop. We laid out our position on affiliate links and spon here.