What Italy is to tailoring and France to haute couture, Japan is to the clothes people actually wear: it defines what’s good and how good gets made. That’s what COMME des GARÇONS, Number (N)ine, and visvim did. And it’s what contemporary Japanese brands with the most buzz – AURALEE, Comoli, ssstein – are doing right now.
“Made in Japan” has become shorthand for quality. For Dukhyun Won, founder of the Korean label NEITHERS, it’s much more than that – it’s an ideal. That’s why, after a decade in Seoul, he’s now moving his entire brand to Tokyo. It’s a bold, unprecedented move. And it also makes a lot of sense.
Beyond their low-key, high-impact aesthetic tastes, much of the global success of Japanese brands comes from being based in Japan, with access to some of the world’s best craftsmen, mills, and production facilities. No surprise, brands and designers everywhere want in on its quality fabrics, dyes, know-how and, truth be told, the feeling of top-tier cool that comes along with it all.
That wasn’t quite enough for NEITHERS, however. Founded in Seoul in 2017, the brand is rebuilding everything in Tokyo this year, from fabric development to customer service. “It’s a complete reset,” says Won. “NEITHERS, as the name suggests, is about breaking binaries – trend versus staple, function versus emotion, and accessibility versus quality. After a decade in South Korea, I concluded that Japan is simply better suited to that.”
NEITHERS started as the in-house label of Slow Steady Club, Won’s Seoul-based multibrand boutique (Won himself will still be based in Seoul to oversee SSC, though he’ll make frequent trips to Tokyo to monitor NEITHERS). Since opening its doors in 2014, the store has become known for stocking new Japanese labels hard to find outside Japan often before anyone else, as with Tokyo-based Graphpaper. Its current list spans heavyweights and emerging names alike, from AURALEE and Kaptain Sunshine to Gorsch and Refomed. Over the past few years, Won has built NEITHERS in the company of these and other Japanese labels admired by Korea’s fashion-forward crowd, a crowd he helped shape.
Asked about that admiration, Gi Tae Hong, founder of Seoul-based Gajiroc, says it “has been unusually strong among Koreans for generations. For a long time, the dominant narrative was that Japanese-made is best, Korean-made is something you support out of patriotism.” While perhaps no longer absolute, “’Made in Japan’ still sets the standard for what’s good in Korea,” Hong adds.
Won says the decision to move NEITHERS across the Korea Strait wasn’t driven by “a vague belief that Japanese makers and factories are inherently superior,” nor by any lack of “skilled artisans and excellent factories” in Korea. Instead, it was shaped by years of firsthand experience working within the two countries’ distinct “production cultures.”
What separates these cultures, he says, is not quality itself but how it’s pursued. “In Korea, quality is about the final results of a given season. In Japan, it’s about maintaining the same high standard across multiple seasons.” What does that mean in practice? “Rather than trying to enforce what cannot be done,” Won says, “a Japanese manufacturer tells you up front what can be done and delivers exactly that, time and again.”
The difference even extends to the consumer side. “In Korea,” Won says, “NEITHERS was recognized relatively quickly, but that recognition has been tied to what’s new or different in a collection. In Japan, people take their time, letting a brand prove itself over several seasons, so recognition followed more gradually.” That patience has paid off. About half of the brand’s stockists are in Japan, including tastemaking Tokyo boutiques like 1LDK and Nid, whose showroom and agency, DUNE, has represented NEITHERS for several seasons.
Wes Allen of the Oakland shop Understory, currently NEITHERS’ only American stockist, is excited about the move to Japan. “After three seasons, I’m along for the ride,” he says.” Looking at some of the new Japanese-made pieces, it all feels even more focused and intentional.”
So, now that it’ll be based in Japan, will NEITHERS become a Japanese brand? “No,” says Won. “I don’t believe a brand is or should be defined by nationality. What matters isn’t where it’s made, but the standards by which it’s made.” It’s just that, for now, those standards are Japanese.
