Mr Yuki Matsuda might not be American, but few men know American style better. The Osaka native moved to Los Angeles for a job when he was barely out of school and has been living there ever since.

Mr Matsuda runs Meg Company, a sartorial stable that includes Yuketen, Monitaly, Chamula and Epperson Mountaineering. He is a bona fide connoisseur of Americana and has a passion for craftsmanship that marries Japanese precision with American history. Here, from his first pair of Levi’s 501s to falling in love with American style, Mr Matsuda tells us his style story.

“When I was 14, the clothes shop near my house in Osaka sold proper denim jeans and these really cool chambray shirts,” he says. “Before then, I’d only ever had very soft jeans that my mother would buy for me. One day I went to this shop by myself and I saw they had some jeans from the US – Levi’s 501s. They were very rigid with a button fly, and the staff told me, ‘These are real jeans that real men wear,’ which at the time appealed to me. They told me so much about denim and how it was made. I was hooked.

“Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, we never had any American stuff. We had a lot of fake Levi’s. We had chambray fabric shirts, but they were nowhere near as good as the American ones. At the time, the US made everything so strong. The quality was too much. If you weren’t working on a construction site, wearing a pair of 501s was like buying a Land Rover to drive around London or New York – it doesn’t make sense at all. But that was amazing to me. Think about it. The construction guys were wearing 501s and chambray shirts. They’re built for working men, and I love that.

“When I started high school, I also began working at this clothing factory that imported from the US and the UK. I learned so much there. In high school, all my friends were really into imported clothing. They thought Levi’s were so different. Every day was like heaven, with all of us wearing Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto but mixing it all up with Americana clothing.

“Then I got a job offer from a Japanese company in LA. The first two years were pretty rough – I just hung out with Japanese people, so I learned nothing about the US. I quit my job after three months and started working in a Japanese video shop, then a Japanese nightclub. Luckily, I met my wife, who hung out with Americans, so I learned English and got to know a lot more people. I started thinking, oh right, this is the real America.

“I started learning more about American clothes and shoes. Then, 20 years ago, I started trying to make shoes for people who live in the Maine countryside, walking around mountains, trees, lakes and rivers. But I also wanted them to work for city dwellers like me, who needed something comfortable but stylish. The most important thing, though, is that I want to get compliments about my shoes. Craftsmanship is important, sure, but I make shoes because I want everybody who wears them to look and feel good in them. And that’s what American style means to me.”