Over the past decade, Kiichiro Asakawa, the 39-year-old founder of independent, quietly tasteful brand Ssstein, has built a serious fashion business. With over 100 global stockists — which from the Spring/Summer 2026 season will include Selfridges, Mr Porter and Net-a-Porter — the brand’s annual revenue has nearly doubled to JPY 1 billion ($6 million) in the past five years.
Known for its floaty silhouettes and muted aesthetic that borders on austere, Ssstein has fast become a firm favorite among menswear fans, alongside fellow Japanese labels like Auralee and A.Presse.
After showing off-schedule in Paris for the past two seasons (which Asakawa says boosted annual sales by around JPY 250 million, or $1.8 million), this week, the brand lands on the official men’s calendar, where it will present its FW26 collection in a bid to further scale its international reach.
A former buyer, Asakawa founded his own store, Carol, in Tokyo’s Shibuya district in 2016, which he still oversees. It’s at Carol that I meet with the designer, two weeks before his Paris Fashion Week Men’s debut. Softly spoken and 185cm tall, his face is framed by an impressive mane of curly hair. He always wears an oversized black Ssstein blazer. As we look around, Asakawa explains that it was in this store that he borrowed his aunt’s sewing machine to begin remaking and selling jeans under the name Stein.
“I sold about 300 pairs of remade denim to customers, and the response was really good,” he says. “I felt a new kind of excitement that I’d never experienced before, and that feeling led me to want to make my own clothes.” Asakawa released the first official collection for Stein in FW17, started holding showrooms from SS18, and rebranded to Ssstein in 2024, adding the triple ‘S’ to avoid trademark issues on the global market.
A self-taught designer, Asakawa was born in Yamanashi prefecture and learned the ropes of design while working at Naichichi, a now-defunct store in Harajuku that sold repurposed vintage. He was constantly captivated by the pieces that surrounded him. “I was unstitching things and remaking them,” he says. “Even as an amateur, there are some things I could understand, and so I learned from there.”
After Naichichi closed down, Asakawa opened Carol, naming the store after the synonym for ‘hymn’. “It’s like a song filled with soul,” he says. “I wanted to create a place where each brand puts their heart and soul into their work, and where all kinds of people would naturally gather.” Sparsely decorated and brightly lit, the store’s racks are filled with tastefully minimal pieces from craft-minded brands that include Hed Mayner, Rier and Polyploid.
The Ssstein label operates in the realm of restrained separates across menswear and womenswear, spanning wool trench coats, cashmere sweaters and tough cotton cargo pants, priced from $180 for an oversized T-shirt to over $2,300 for one of its coveted wool coats, which are often the first to sell out. “I get the impression that people are really looking for something simple but comfortable to wear, with a bit of nuance,” Asakawa says. The nuances he mentions come through the original fabrics that he often develops with his suppliers, which are mainly in Japan, as well as the silhouettes that are comfortably oversized and fit the relaxed but sophisticated mood of the moment.
.jpg)
Andreas Murkudis, the renowned retailer who runs his eponymous store in Berlin, began stocking Ssstein two years ago. He’s found it to be a runaway success. “In 2024, we did a big event with the brand and sold more than 50% [of our stock] in one week, and we never have to mark it down,” says Murkudis. “The clothes make for a perfect closet — very clean, oversized and unisex. It doesn’t try to be fashionable at all.”
Asakawa is hoping that joining the Paris schedule in an official capacity will help his brand reach a much wider audience, and bring in more capital to invest back into the business. “Creative work requires money, and we want to create better products,” he says. This year, the designer plans to hire two more production staff to add to Ssstein’s slimmer team of four full-timers: an international sales manager, two product managers and Asakawa himself.
Wholesale currently represents 90% of Ssstein’s revenues, while the remaining 10% comes from direct-to-consumer, including Carol. The US is an increasingly significant market for the brand outside Japan, where it is stocked by cult menswear boutiques like Mohawk General Store in LA, and C’H’C’M and La Garçonne in NYC. “We sell a wide range of denim and leather in the States,” he says. Coats sell particularly well in Europe, where stockists include Selfridges and Printemps, while in Asia, where customers generally make more adventurous purchases, it’s a wider range: “slacks, suits, denim, and a fairly wide range of coats and leather”.
Interest from international buyers has built slowly, but began snowballing once the brand hosted its first off-schedule Paris show in January 2025. “Until we started showing in Paris, sales were healthy and had been growing little by little, and the pattern was similar both domestically and overseas,” says Asakawa. He was also mindful not to expand too fast. Once the off-schedule shows began spiking interest, the designer contacted his stockists to reduce their orders. “We were careful not to upset our supply flexibility and balance.”
Is Asakawa planning to open up a flagship store for Ssstein? “It’s very much in the back of my mind,” he says. “Right now, I’m putting my focus into Carol, but a Ssstein store is definitely a possibility in the future.”
With strong business foundations already laid, Asakawa isn’t nervous about his first official Paris show, which will take place on Sunday at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. “I don’t feel much pressure, I feel more joy than anything,” he says. “I just want to put on a good show.”
