Why Japanese Brand Kapital Makes Us Smile

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Why Japanese Brand Kapital Makes Us Smile

2 June 2016

Life got you down? Allow us to introduce you to happiness you can wear.

Some clothes you need for attending weddings or receiving awards and things like that. Others you invest in to look sharp and professional during the working week. But there are some clothes that you pick up and wear for no other reason than that they just make you happy. This lattermost category seems to be pretty much the stock-in-trade of Japanese brand KAPITAL, a denim-focused label that is named in honour of its home town of Kojima, known as the denim capital of Japan. Like its compatriots VisvimRemi Relief and OrSlow, KAPITAL has a somewhat nostalgic bent, offering garments inspired by vintage workwear and the boro patchworking technique that has been practised for centuries in rural Japan. But there’s also something uniquely, charmingly folksy and homespun about the brand’s collection for spring 2016 which is giving us particularly fuzzy feelings here at MR PORTER HQ. Given that there’s generally not enough such emotions floating around in this grim world of ours, we thought it only best to pass them on. So here goes. Why should you love KAPITAL? Let us count the ways…

“Everyone should have a denim shirt.” Sounds like something we at MR PORTER have said many times before. How about this, though: “Everyone should have a denim shirt emblazoned with little hearts.” Not so predictable now, eh? In fact, that’s probably not the best general advice – maybe we should just urge you, with a little more clarity, to consider this wonderful denim creation from KAPITAL, emblazoned with an appliqué heart above the left chest pocket and another embroidered on the back of the collar. Not only does it mischievously subvert a very masculine workwear idiom, with these wry graphics, it feels like an old garment that has already had a lifetime’s worth of love poured into it. Basically, we’ve never seen anything like it – a rare occasion in the realm of denim shirts. Wear it under a minimal coach jacket from Folk and, when the moment calls for it, whip the outer layer off and dazzle everyone with your fun side.

The track top looks set to be a trend for the coming AW season, which means that we saw a lot of them at the menswear collections this January. However, we didn’t see any quite like this quintessentially KAPITAL-y take on the look, which replaces the sharp, sporty stripes of the archetypal track top with rustic, home-made-looking strips of off-white floral embroidery. It’s bohemian and mad but will nonetheless work with a pair of sand-coloured chinos. So what are you waiting for?

It’s easy to forget that such innocuous accessories as socks and boxers – when you get the right ones, that is – are not just obligatory and functional, but have the potential to make a sartorial statement. That is, until you clap your eyes on these KAPITAL socks, which have replaced the customary quarter-orange-shaped heel detail with a bandana-esque star pattern (a previous iteration, now sadly sold out, employed a giant yellow smiley in this position, though these new ones are excellent too). We’re enjoying the idea of wearing them with a pair of cowhide Visvim shoes, stomping through a ramshackle country landscape without a care in the world. Kind of like a latter-day, grown-up, Japanese-y Huckleberry Finn. And we don’t care if that’s a confusing image.