At a time when the globe is practically an open buffet of travel options, Satoshi Kuwata recently set his sights on Greenland. Not as a political statement of support for the country’s uncertain future, mind you, but because, apparently, it’s one of the finest fishing destinations on earth. He said he’d been nurturing a 15-year ambition to finally meet Arctic trouts in person.
He traveled there months ago, before the headlines made Greenland feel like a rather blustery geopolitical experiment. “I mainly stayed inside,” he admitted, “because the wind outside was so strong you could barely stand upright.” Still, a week of mostly indoor contemplation proved surprisingly productive: enough insights, and perhaps enough soggy fantasies of fatty Atlantic cods, to underpin his fall collection.
In Greenland, Kuwata had to confront what could be described as a masterclass in environmental minimalism: “It’s just silence, a barren sprawl of rocks and ice, extreme weather, no trees, an unforgiving nature, and nothingness,” he said. However, a visit to the Greenland National Museum in Nuuk revealed an antidote to all this starkness: a treasure trove of traditional costumes and accessories. Crafted primarily by Inuit communities from animal skins, these pieces were feats of ingenuity, designed not for ornament, but for survival, making virtuous use of the few resources available. Their shamanistic aura prompted Kuwata to draw a parallel with the Ainu shamans of northern Japan, whose culture shares the same reverence for nature and a hard-earned resourcefulness born out of living at its mercy.
Resourcefulness and ingenuity are indeed Kuwata’s bread and butter, though butter is hardly a Japanese cooking ingredient. Years spent in Italy, however, have recalibrated his culinary, and creative, regulations. His practice flourishes through clever problem-solving, steered by a philosophy of “playful functionality,” where rigorous craft meets a slightly bonkers spirit of invention. Unisex garments shape-shift into bags via a set of origami maneuvers: zip here, fold there, and voilà! you’re witnessing pocket-size feats of engineering. The concept sprang from a practical need to neatly pack clothes in a foldable carryall for fishing trips, though a fish can only dream of being carried in something this stylish.
The fall show took place at Setchu’s new headquarters, where Kuwata’s tools of the trade were ceremoniously arranged on tatami mats and a select audience perched on straw bales, as if attending an arcane, yet rather soigné rural ritual. What followed was part live demonstration, part wizardry: In a zip-and-fold performance, Kuwata coaxed padded capacious totes into a skirt-and-top set and, moments later, into an elegant navy overcoat. Setchu’s garments operate in a perpetual state of deconstruction and reconstruction, a sort of sartorial flux chasing inventive silhouettes that flirt with asymmetry, collision, and the strategic upending of the strict tailoring rules Kuwata absorbed on Savile Row. However imaginative the results, they were never untethered: Each piece remained grounded in British rigor and polished with the quiet restraint of Japanese elegance.
The Greenland escapade provided fresh fuel for his sartorial imagination. Observing how indigenous communities wear animal skins, engineered to withstand the land’s unforgiving climate, turned into an unlikely crash course in outerwear architecture. Their shapes informed a new armhole and shoulder construction for jackets, coats, and cocooning duvets, drawn inward toward the chest in deference to animal anatomy and to the universal cold-weather reflex: the instinct to fold forward and brace against the elements. They actually looked surprisingly attractive.
Accessories drove home Setchu’s core idea: the ongoing flirtation between Japanese and Western cultures. Traditional straw slippers and boots, beautifully handwoven in rural mountain villages in Japan to ward off the cold, offered a grounded counterpoint to Kuwata’s exuberant sartorial hyperboles. And because fishing is never far from his personal mythology, fish predictably resurfaced, this time swimming their way back from Greenland as the looped handles of furry pom-pom kawaii bags.
