： THE ORIGIN OF DEVOA

The title of my homepage is “Songs Of Impermanence”.
It is dedicated to the times of our lives. Time spent in concentration and enjoyment, because all our lives are fleeting when viewed from outer space. Just as my life is also fleeting.
The ability to live in the present moment and the kindness and support I have received from so many people around me has allowed me to concentrate on and enjoy my work and my creative process.
I would like to take this opportunity to carefully explain our production process and exactly how DEVOA is created. It’s not just about making clothes for me. Everything in my life is connected and has lead to the place I am today.
DEVOA represents me.

26th, October, 2024.
The day my father passed away.
Normally, it would be very rare for my mother to call me on my mobile phone during the day. On this particular day my mother called to tell me the bad news. I remember how her voice trembled as she spoke.
The day before he died my mother and father had gone out together and he had even requested the food that he wanted to eat for lunch the next day.
However he was never able to wake up again.
Perhaps there were still things that my father had wanted to accomplish in his life but I think, on the whole, it was a very pleasant way for his life to end.

This is the first time that I have ever experienced the loss of a parent, and although I’m sad, it is also a very strange feeling that I cannot fully describe. It’s difficult to concentrate on usual things and instead I find myself thinking back more about the past.

As I write this it is now 5:55am on October 27th and I am on a train returning to my hometown of Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, to make preparations for his funeral.

Even though it’s within Japan, it still takes about six hours by plane from Tokyo to reach Sasebo City, and so it is really quite far from my home.
Since it is the end of the month, most company executives are busy dealing with accounting work and I am in the same position myself.
I am writing these thoughts on my cell phone now since, for some reason, strange emotions have exploded within me that make it difficult for me to think about usual mundane affairs.
So I will escape from the things I should be thinking about and instead work on recording events and thoughts from my past instead.

There was one time during spring break when I was 15 years old, I had to attend a high school to study wrestling which was about a four-hour drive from my home, also in Nagasaki Prefecture.
As a result, I started living alone that year and did not really spend much time with my parents. However, of course, I still have many memories of my father.
During my high school years, I was absorbed in wrestling, so I hardly had any free time during those three years, but my father would use his days off to drive the more than four hours from home to my school to watch me fight tournaments. I remember that each time he would come to my boarding house and treat me to eel, my favorite food.

I myself feel that my bloodline is stronger on my mother’s side of the family.
They say that blood type has a strong effect on what we say, our perspective, our senses, and even our nails, skin, and fingertips, and all of these are hereditary.
When I was 15, my high school gave me 2 options :
Choose a high school close to home, or go to a high school far away from home and live alone with the intention of devoting myself to wrestling.
I can still remember the discussion I had with my parents.
My father was a civil servant and lived a normal, stable life, while my mother converted the site of my grandfather’s tailoring factory into a ‘Sogetsu’ Ikebana (flower-arranging) school. She preferred to work in more artistic fields such as kimono and the tea ceremony.

A stand for dried flowers created in a completely different style from my mother’s original ‘Sogetsu school’ tradition.
Made for my CROMÄGNON label in 2019.

As a result my parents had completely opposing opinions about my further education.
My father wanted me to go to the high school close to home, but my mother encouraged me to take on new adventures even if it meant leaving home.
It is clear to me now that the advice my mother gave me during that discussion was the beginning of everything that would lead up to me creating DEVOA later in life.
She gazed into my eyes and told me :
“This is your life. This is the only time you will be able to focus on what you truly love and immerse yourself in it without worrying about money, before you have to grow into adulthood. Choose what you want for your life.”
As a result of her words, I chose the path of wrestling with no hesitation.

Me competing in a Japanese national tournament.

At this time, I chose a path that was different from what my father had wanted, but he was still happy for me every time I achieved good results in a national competition.
However, he was worried about me because I had to lose so much weight every time I competed in a national tournament.
Thanks to my wrestling achievements I was later able to get a job at a car manufacturing company. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that I could have a stable life at the company, despite not having much common sense or experience due to the fact that I had spent my entire life until I was 18 devoted to wrestling.
So just before I turned 20, following my own feelings and intuition, I decided to quit the company that offered me the chance of a stable and secure life.

After I quit, since I had no other skills besides wrestling, I worked as a training gym instructor for five or six years, making use of some of my practical knowledge.

I had never had a part-time job until I graduated from high school, but at this time I began working part-time in a variety of industries in my free time, even into the night.
Around this time, as if by some stroke of fate, I suddenly got an offer from the owner of a clothing store I enjoyed visiting as a customer, and I ended up running the store alone, as the manager.
I only needed to be taught how to handle money and do calculations at the store and soon I was able to sell items on my own.
However, looking back on this time, I realize that my appearance was somewhat different from that of an average salesperson. I had a shaved head, thin eyebrows and was standing in the front of the store wearing a head-to-toe all-black suit. In fact, you could say that my appearance at that time was something like that of a Japanese gang member.
I was still young and had a wild look in my eyes and the store was located in a very dangerous area, so I had real Japanese gangsters as customers and spent many exciting days there.
I am sure that customers who knew me back then will probably still remember me as a guy who looked very far from the typical clothing store employee.
It was during this time as an instructor and salesperson that I think I really learned the qualities that people normally possess, such as kindness and consideration for others.

After working as a salesperson for about three years, I started to become more interested in making products rather than just purchasing and selling them. It’s quite hard to put into words exactly why I became interested in making things. Simply put, my senses had changed and I began to imagine more ideal kinds of clothing than I was currently handling.
I think this may be quite a normal occurrence for most salespeople.
Once this idea of creation took root in my mind, my destiny changed dramatically.
Luckily, in my free-time, I was able to meet a man who was making patterns for his own personal clothing. It turned out that we shared certain ideas and interests such as movies and Marcel Duchamp as well as designers such as Martin Margiela and the Antwerp 6, Helmut Lang, Carol Christian Poell and Carpe Diem. We both spent most of the money we had at the time on clothes and enjoyed creating our own unique sense of style in our own way.
As we spent more time together after work and on our days off our passion for fashion exploded.
I am not quite sure what is the best way to express it …..

What is my special skill? What is the brand philosophy and concept that allows me to fully express myself in the process of making clothes?
It was a method and way of thinking that used patterns based on sports taping theory.
Sports tape is used to fix and support certain parts of an athletes body based on the fact that human movements have only a certain range of motion, and there are complex neural circuits and nerve endings throughout the body which sports tape helps to support and protect.
There are different ways to wrap taping, such as inward or outward, depending on the part of the body, and it has a mysterious effect on the nerves of the body.
Most clothing has areas where fabric is sewn together and overlap and these areas are often stiff.
I wanted to design patterns so that these stiff sewn together parts do not adversely affect the movement of the body and would be easy to move in and fit the human body without affecting the wearer’s movements.
I create three-dimensional patterns that are tailored to human anatomy and take into account the physical balance (balance of the limbs) to make the wearer’s core appear longer than their actual body type. I also came up with patterns that add muscle-like volume to the clothing to make the body shape look more impressive.
In this way, the DEVOA philosophy evolved based on the specialized knowledge I gained from my own experience as a wrestler and instructor.

At this time I began to spend most of my free time visiting fabric stores and sewing factories and, while helping out there, learning a lot.
In fact, during this time I was able to understand the process of production quicker than would have been possible if I had studied at fashion school.
Without this experience and the various people I met my knowledge and passion for fabrics and clothes-making would never have developed and I would probably have given up on making clothes.

When I first started the brand, I sold only five styles of clothing in a space in a local cafe. I held an exhibition where I gathered friends together and sold the clothes while coffee was served.
We also once held an exhibition in an Italian restaurant with a very lovely interior.
I also approached customers I didn’t know and sold short-sleeved T-shirts and knitwear that cost 10,000 to 50,000 yen or more. This was quite expensive and I think I was very lucky to have had some success with this since suddenly approaching customers is so difficult in this day and age.
I still have deep gratitude, from the bottom of my heart, for all these customers since the investment they made in me gave me the energy I needed to tackle my next project.

My first Serge Gainsbourg collage. Made in 2004 when I was working in a clothes store.

Hand-made swatch for clothing made for personal customers in 2005.

My first exhibition, held in a cafe in 2005.

About four years after I first started out as a limited liability company, my mother gave me a pair of scissors and a brand tag that had been used by my grandfather, who was a tailor.
This was not when we first started to produce the brand, but actually six years after the launch.
The scissors were wrapped in a quilted cloth cover that would have been made by my grandmother, but since the cutting edge of the cover was torn, I decided to make a new cover for the scissors myself.
I had started my career in wrestling and this wrestling experience had them led me to become a training instructor.
I gained a lot of knowledge and common sense from my experiences as a training instructor, and then became interested in various aspects of clothing while working at the clothing store. This was then what led me to use this knowledge and experience to create my own brand.
Finally, these tiny dots of experiences and encounters all connected and became a line. I can still remember the moment that I realized this and how the baton from from my grandfather had at last been passed on to me.

I am grateful to my family.
My early 20s were spent devoted to sport, including wrestling,
While at this present time I am creating exhibitions of my work in Paris.

I feel that I am still immature as a person, and still in the middle of my journey towards achieving my dreams as a designer.
In 2007 I had my first exhibition in Tokyo and in 2008 I attempted my first exhibition in Paris.
Since my brand was still still virtually unknown there hardly any overseas buyers who would purchase it and I returned to Japan exhausted…
But that is a story I will save for later and tell you at another time.