Monastic Menswear Gets a Reckoning
What happens when mud-dyed clothing becomes a meme?
Welcome back to wimpy! Today’s story is about expensive clothes that adopt traditional Japanese folk techniques, and the anger they sometimes inspire. Are these artisan-adjacent brands really “selling ascetic virtues as luxury goods”? And what happens when they become meme-able?
Also, a preview of what’s coming up over the next couple of weeks:
- The verdict on T.T’s first fragrance
- Where to buy excellent shirts for the summer
- An interview with the team behind Omar Afridi
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Last week, a user called Leftypoint posted a long takedown of the San Francisco-based brand Evan Kinori on the Throwing Fits subreddit. The 2,000 word screed, which sparked some disparaging (but kind of hilarious) memes, took aim at the mythology around Kinori’s clothes more than the clothes themselves, which can be summed up as brown and expensive. They’re also flattering and well-made, with a focus on natural fabrics and a transparent supply chain that includes working with craftspeople in Japan on dyeing and textiles. Pretty inoffensive, as brands go.
The author argued, quite eloquently but ultimately with too much grudge to take seriously, that in the decade since its inception, Evan Kinori transformed from an honest menswear pioneer into something preachy and hypocritical. “What began as a thoughtful argument for slower, more meaningful clothing,” they scolded, “slowly devolved into a system of narratives that now asks every garment to carry a philosophical burden.”
According to the disgruntled commentator, whom it turns out has been a dedicated Evan Kinori hate-poster for a while, the brand went from wabi sabi aesthetic and appreciation for natural materials into a sneering, sinister example of a brand that peddles a moral manifesto; “I wear these slow, thoughtful clothes because I am better than you,” type of thing.
There is no real evidence of any of this beyond the author projecting some insecurity, but I think unintentionally raises a more interesting point: What happens when a brand becomes a meme? When a designer becomes so easy to satirise, does that mean it has reached peak cultural relevancy, or that it’s just… predictable? And when a small independent brand scales it business, is it always at the expense of authenticity? (Sidenote: Rick Owens and Donatella Versace are the only fashion designers to have their own Know Your Meme pages, which feels like a badge of honour.)
Maybe it’s proof that Kinori has created such a strong design language that so it’s easy to recognise and thus easy to make fun of. But then, the designer is far from the most extreme example of the sphere of brown and expensive clothes that he operates in. Leftypoint should meet the Chinese: you imagine a yarn-dyed shirt from Aviva Jifei Xue or drawstring trousers from Ziggy Chen would bring on a hernia. Even so, it’s easy to inadvertently dress as a potion seller when wearing brands in this artisanal pocket of menswear, earthy and drapey as they are.
To his credit, Kinori has managed to package this earthy drapiness into something much more palatable through his slouchy, subtly contemporary silhouettes. They are wearable and thus sellable: in 2020 the New York Times reported that Kinori’s business brings in $500,000 of gross annual revenue, which, considering the fanfare around the brand, we can assume will have increased considerably in six years since.
Brands in this artisanal sphere of fashion, whether they are Japanese or not, have readily adopted the language of Japanese fabric development. Every country dyes their textiles, but the Japanese way of doing it holds particular sway in menswear (see Thing, Japan meme).
