From the Tokai region to the rest of Japan. Now in its eighth edition this spring, "Re:" is a special project initiated by Graphpaper Nagoya, in which Graphpaper director Takayuki Minami takes the store's requests and transforms them into ideas of his own.
For its third anniversary, this edition comprises four pieces in total: three made from exceptionally high-quality deadstock fabrics, alongside a reissue of an item from Graphpaper's early days.
Here, Graphpaper Nagoya store manager and buyer Ken Kokubo and Minami look back on the development process.
Just as in their previous conversation, what follows is a candid and unfiltered exchange that reflects the easygoing relationship between the two.
Interview & Text by Rui Konno
―We heard that there are some new developments with Re:, so I thought it would be good to have you two talk about it again, as you did last year.
Ken Kokubo (hereafter Kokubo): I was genuinely surprised last time. I couldn't believe they were actually going to publish the conversation as it was.
―We barely edited it, if I remember correctly.
Kokubo: They used the parts where I thought, "You're actually going to include that!?" And then they cut the parts where I thought, "Surely they're going to use this."
Takayuki Minami (hereafter Minami): (Laughs.)
Kokubo: Re: itself happens twice a year, but last time we didn't have enough time to turn it into an article. Then some customers actually complained. They were like, "What, you're not doing it again?"
―So Re: is a regular twice-yearly project?
Minami: No, that's just something you decided on your own.
Kokubo: That's right. It basically comes down to whether I tell Minami, "I want to do this," or not.
Minami: And sometimes I just reject him. I'll say, "Nope, don't want to do it."
Kokubo: Yes. There are definitely times when nothing actually happens, but so far things have been going pretty smoothly since Graphpaper Nagoya opened.
―Oh, so the series actually predates the Nagoya store?
Minami: How many have we done? If you include the Jack in the Box ones, it's quite a few.
※ Jack in the Box was a select shop operated by the company behind the Graphpaper Nagoya franchise. Kokubo was previously a member of its staff.
Kokubo: We've done eight. Basically, whenever I think of something that I'd genuinely want for myself, I bring it up with Minami. I'll tell him at a trade show or afterwards, "I'd really like something like this." From my perspective, he's the senior figure who's easiest to contact, so I don't really feel like I need to be too careful around him. I don't mean that disrespectfully, but that's just how it is.
Minami: That's fine. I'm being used.
―This is a pretty low-key start for an interview.
Kokubo: Ah, shit. We got the opening wrong. You should probably use this part in the article. I've got a surprise.
Minami: ?
―What's that orange box?
Kokubo: Ta-da! Minami, congratulations on turning 50!
Minami: Huh?
―Wait, is today your birthday?
Minami: Yeah.
Kokubo: Is the fact that our interview is today some kind of coincidence... or did you plan it?
Minami: Of course I didn't plan it. What's this? Hermès?
Kokubo: That's what you'd think, right?
Minami: (opens the box) …Oh! Komeda Coffee!?
Kokubo: Yep. Komeda Coffee. I found it. You only ever drink iced coffee, right? Whenever you order iced coffee at Komeda, they always serve it in this stainless-steel mug. It's freezing cold.
Minami: True. This is great. Thanks.
Kokubo: See! Perfect opening, right? Minami has such a strong connection to Nagoya, so I thought, "This has to be it." It's your hometown, after all.
Minami: Just because I was born there.
Kokubo: By the way, my girlfriend specifically told me I have to say that this gift is from both of us.
―Ah, she's the one who calls Minami "Oyabin," right?
Kokubo: That's her!
Minami: I'll drink my coffee out of this. …Do we really need all this?
Kokubo: Yep. I didn't prepare anything else for today.
―I have to admit, I'm slightly amazed that we haven't talked about clothes once yet.
Kokubo: Since Minami has reached this milestone of turning 50, I thought I'd go back to my roots and play the role of the junior again. That's another kind of "Re:."
Minami: Enough with that. Can we get to the actual topic?
Kokubo: Yes.
―There are four pieces this time, and I understand that three of them use deadstock fabrics.
Kokubo: That's right. Our company has been running a select shop for 30 years in addition to the Graphpaper Nagoya franchise. We've worked with an importer for decades who helps us source overseas brands. A little while ago, when I was talking to them, they mentioned, "We actually have some deadstock fabrics."
Minami: They're the people who import fabrics as well as clothing, right?
Kokubo: That's right. They import things like Sidogras, for example. They sent me some fabric swatches, and they looked promising, so I thought maybe we could use them. But when I mentioned it to Minami, he said, "What's the Re: about it?"
―Here we go. The Concept Police have arrived.
Minami: (Laughs.)
Kokubo: I said, "I think this could become a large-scale Re: project: taking fabrics that have already been produced but no longer have a purpose, and reconstructing the idea behind them to propose them to the world once again."
Minami: …
Kokubo: Okay, honestly, that explanation came afterwards. But I think men in particular love the sound of "deadstock." And Graphpaper doesn't really do that kind of thing. With Re:, I wanted to make something that isn't part of the regular line but is still a little bit interesting.
Minami: Even if someone says, "I want to use deadstock fabric," what's important to me is what that fabric actually is. If there hadn't been anything good, I'd have just said, "No, this stuff is no good." This time there happened to be some good fabrics, so I thought, okay, let's try it.
―So there was quite a range of deadstock fabrics to choose from?
Kokubo: There was. I personally selected the fabric we're using for this set-up, and picked out a few others as well, but as usual, Minami rejected all of them.
Minami: Yeah.
―Just "yeah"? (Laughs.)
Kokubo: I can't go into too much detail, but this is deadstock fabric that was used by a certain major fashion house. I'm admittedly a bit of a fashion nerd, but I just thought it was really good fabric. It looked cool and lightweight, too.
Minami: What's the composition?
Osamu Iida, Graphpaper PR (hereafter Iida): 98% wool and 2% polyurethane.
―Polyurethane? But that dry, crisp texture feels almost like linen.
Minami: It's probably in the core of the yarn, isn't it? The polyurethane is probably just the core. Otherwise, I don't think you'd get a 2% ratio. I thought this kind of heathered wool was really nice, especially with the slightly "Grandpa" character we were looking at this season, like those old Armani collections.
Kokubo: I see. The fabric itself is interesting, but I also like the way Graphpaper takes something military-inspired and deliberately makes it in wool. You know what I mean?
Minami: We tend to turn things upside down.
Kokubo: Exactly. You used to release wool cargo pants fairly often, but you haven't really been making them recently. I've had this vague feeling that I'd like another pair. So from the beginning, I was thinking this fabric could work for cargo pants.
Minami: The military pants are based on the M-65 as usual, but traditional cargo pants have the pockets positioned too low to be practical. So we repositioned them higher and removed the drawstring from the hem, updating them for modern use. The shirt in the matching set is based on our regular style with side pockets. You can wear it like a shirt jacket, thrown on as a light outer layer, and it's versatile enough that it isn't really tied to a particular season. I think it worked well as a product.
Kokubo: I don't really have any say in that part, so I leave it to Minami. It definitely looks better that way. Oh, and one other thing: these pants are actually cropped.
Minami: Now that you mention it, you did say you wanted them cropped.
Kokubo: I love cropped trousers. There's obviously an American Ivy influence, but I think they work really well with the slightly in-between proportions of the Japanese body. The Graphpaper jeans I'm wearing today, I cut the hems myself. I basically like all my trousers short.
Minami: On this sample, though, they'll come out full-length on some people.
Kokubo: So the production version will be a little shorter. I'm sure Minami also likes old Comme des Garçons, but I've always liked those long jackets and cropped trouser matching sets that Comme des Garçons has done for years. It's not that this length is trendy, but I wanted to quietly slip it into Re:.
―That kind of personal instinct seems to play an important role in Re: every time.
Kokubo: Yes. And as a buyer, I also go to trade shows in Paris. When I saw brands like Dries and Lemaire making trousers with shorter proportions, I thought, "There might be something good here."
Minami: Hmm. They'd probably look good pulled in at the hem and tucked into socks, too.
Kokubo: Exactly. But rather than simply doing it because those brands were doing it, I like the fact that something I've always liked has come back around again. That's one of the great things about fashion.
―That's Re: too. A return.
Kokubo: Ah! That's true. Can we pretend I said that?
Minami: …
―What happened to the fabrics Kokubo proposed that didn't click with Minami?
Minami: When they got to me, there wasn't really any selection from Takeru yet. I just got a pile of deadstock fabric samples and chose from those.
Kokubo: I did put little marks on the ones I liked, though. He just completely ignored them.
―That's quite a discrepancy in your recollections.
Minami: Really?
Kokubo: Yes. Although, interestingly, I hadn't marked this seersucker at all, but Minami picked it out straight away. The others were rejected and these two fabrics were selected. Honestly, at first I thought the seersucker was pretty boring. But when the sample shirt came in, I was like, "I'm sorry." It was so good. I think it might actually be my favorite.
Minami: Since it was launching on April 25, I wanted something that felt cool and easy to wear. Seersucker is often used from an Ivy or traditional perspective, which makes it easy to turn that context upside down. If we'd made a button-down shirt from it, it would have felt very traditionally "preppy." I wanted to use it outside that context.
―Having actually touched it, it does feel very cool and lightweight.
Minami: Seersucker has that uneven surface, so there's less contact with the skin, which makes it cooler. Wool also has advantages that I've really come to appreciate over the past few summers. It has high odor resistance, and unlike cotton, the yarn can breathe. I travel a lot, so if I'm wearing cotton for several days, I'd start worrying about smells. With wool, that's much less of a concern. And this particular fabric doesn't wrinkle easily, either, so I thought it would be good.
Kokubo: Definitely. It's really convenient.
Minami: What's the composition of this one?
Iida: 50% cotton, 25% polyester, 23% wool and 2% polyurethane.
Kokubo: What? It has all that in it? I thought it was 100% cotton.
Minami: It doesn't look like 100% cotton, does it? It looks like something you'd find from an overseas brand. Adding wool to give it that dry, crisp hand. The yarn count is fine, so that's probably why it has this character. And because the shrinkage rates are different, it might become an interesting fabric after washing.
Kokubo: This was a fabric from a very established Italian manufacturer, and I imagine it was originally intended for jackets. But this shirt really got me. We show customers images beforehand, and frustratingly, this ended up being the most popular one. It made me a little annoyed because I realized, "These people really are following Takayuki Minami."
Minami: What's with you? (Laughs.)
Kokubo: I'm kidding. (Laughs.) You might not remember, Minami, but we also talked a little about how it might be interesting to make the whole capsule collection grey. In the end, we didn't intentionally plan it that way; it just happened because of the character of the fabrics. But it reminded me how deeply Minami has this instinct for balancing a collection like this. The model shots came out really well, too.
Minami: I haven't even seen them yet. Iida won't show me.
Iida: Sorry.
Kokubo: (Laughs.) In Iida's defense, I kept asking him, "Does it look okay?" so I think he eventually showed me first just to shut me up.
―For this Re: interview, Iida mentioned wanting to make use of words beginning with "Re:." He said someone internally had suggested "Respect," and asked if that was strange. So I looked into the etymology of "respect," and apparently it comes from re- ("again") and spectare ("to look"). I thought that was surprisingly appropriate.
Kokubo: Interesting.
―Although neither of the people actually involved in the project had said anything like that.
Minami: Do we really have to attach a word to everything in this series? (Laughs.)
Kokubo: Well, it does have "Re:" in the name, after all.
Minami: This T-shirt is probably the most Re: of them all.
Kokubo: Yeah.
―How so?
Minami: Back in the early days of Graphpaper, we used to make heather grey T-shirts. For some reason, though, the heather grey never sold as well as the other colors.
Kokubo: That's pretty much the case with other brands too. Compared with the standard white and black.
Minami: But I like heather grey. I don't actually wear it myself.
Kokubo: Right. …What?
Minami: I like it as an item. But because the response wasn't that strong, we discontinued it a long time ago and switched to solid grey. Then this guy said, "I want to do heather grey again," so we brought it back for the first time in ages. It's not like we're selling it through our own stores, so I thought, whatever, let's do it.
Kokubo: It'll sell! (Laughs.)
―He's probably just playing hard to get.
Kokubo: Of course I know that. We've known each other for more than ten years. Even when we were making it, he was saying, "Oh! This is good!"
Minami: (Laughs.) But making this is actually a huge pain because we have to re-thread the machine from scratch. Normally, the yarn for our standard colors is already set up on the machine and we run it 365 days a year. For this heather grey, we have to stop the whole thing just to set it up again.
Kokubo: Sorry about that.
―An apology! (Laughs.)
Minami: Re: is originally a project about reconstructing things that already existed, but this one really is just about making it again and putting it back out there. The shape hasn't changed at all, either.
Kokubo: Ever since I got into fashion, I've worn American casual brands like RRL as well as skate brands. I always loved the heather grey T-shirts from those brands because they looked so good. There was a period when I stopped wearing them, but recently that kind of heritage feeling has gradually come back to me, and I've been wanting to wear them again. Customers would also say things like, "I'd like to wear heather grey again," or "It would look good with denim." So I thought, let's ask Minami.
―You were acting as the representative of the people.
Kokubo: Exactly. I'm the negotiator.
Minami: …
―Generally, though, I feel like grey T-shirts often contain polyester, whereas this one is 100% cotton, right?
Minami: Polyester is usually added to make them cheaper. But this heather grey T-shirt uses what we call a 30/2 two-ply yarn. It's not some particularly special yarn. It's the most standard heather yarn there is, and that's what we wanted for Graphpaper. The reason it has this particular appearance is simply because we knitted an ordinary yarn on a loopwheel machine at a high density.
―Right.
Minami: Our approach is often to take standard elements and turn them upside down, or to take something ordinary and change the perspective slightly so that it becomes something that doesn't already exist in the world. If we used some luxurious, highly special yarn here, that would defeat the point.
Kokubo: I see.
Minami: We actually tried it on all sorts of knitting machines. We used the same yarn and had the same craftsmen work on it, but none of them produced this result. There happened to be an Azuma knitting machine available that could knit more efficiently, so I thought, "If we can make it on that, that would obviously be better," and we tried it. But it didn't come out well at all. Then we tried a sinker knitting machine, but the gauge became too dense and it didn't work either. In the end, this particular texture only exists because of the special knitting machine and the skill of the people operating it. It made me realize again that you can't make this fabric any other way. It's a pretty incredible fabric.
Kokubo: Wow.
Minami: Even the ribbing for the neck is knitted by a different company. And, of course, they have to re-thread their machines specifically for it.
―So it's really about how much of a privilege it is to have them bring that machine back into operation for this.
Kokubo: Yes. And I asked them to do it again fully aware of what that involved.
Minami: …
―In terms of refocusing on something that existed in the past, this is probably the most Re: piece of all.
Kokubo: It's basically the same as it was back then, but it does have the Re: tag, and I heard they also changed the print on the inside of the collar slightly.
Minami: It'll be the Re: version.
Kokubo: Exactly. You said it would incorporate the Re: concept.
Minami: If you're going to make these tags, you have to produce a whole bunch of them, so it's a pain.
Kokubo: You used to say, "This is really good. I want to wear it myself. I'll just tear the tag off, though." (Laughs.) And I'd be like, "Please don't tear it off…"
―After doing this so many times, has Re: become something you now expect? Like, "I wonder when the next one will come around?"
Minami: Not really. I always forget about it. I don't do anything unless Takeru reminds me.
Kokubo: That's when I figured it out. Since Minami is going to forget if he's left to his own devices, the quickest way is to get the person in charge of Graphpaper's production involved from our side. That person will definitely remember and make sure it happens.
Minami: It's helpful when everyone manages to work things out like that. (Laughs.)
―Ah, there it is. "Re" as in remind.
Minami: Oh!
Kokubo: …What?
―To remind someone so they don't forget.
Kokubo: Ah! I get it. That's it. Can you put that down as my line, too? (Laughs.)
Minami: I'm literally handing you an opening to tie this back to Re:, and you're still an idiot. (Laughs.)
■ Release
Saturday, April 25, 12:00 -
※Available simultaneously in-store at Graphpaper NAGOYA /
Graphpaper NAGOYA WEB STORE
