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Takayuki Hosoi, you’re making
children’s clothes with a personal touch, hand-drawing them one by one. Please
let us know how you started in this business?
I was ‘the child who most
loved his grandmother in all the world’ since my early childhood and my
grandmother, who passed away several years ago, used to draw ‘Haiga’ therefore I
had more chance to see colors and painting tools than most other people. It may
have unwittingly attributed to my liking for drawing. After about a year after
my grandmother’s death, I brought took the books on ‘Haiga’ my grandmother
treasured when she was alive, and I taught myself how to draw. The books my
grandmother treasured are now in tatters as I read them almost every
day.
Today, I have many
varieties of design for the clothes as I now work in collaboration with a
calligrapher whom I met after starting this work. When I first started making
hand-drawn T- shirts, the only textbook I used for reference were my
grandmothers’. I remember the patterns I had were more suited for elderly
people, like eggplants pictures or ferns.
Why have
you come to deal with children’s clothes?
Of course, my
grandmother’s influence was a primary factor, but I wasn’t particularly stuck in
“Japanese style” only as such. However, I was sick of T-shirts with illegible
English writing on them. I couldn’t value printed T- shirts we see everywhere.
There T-shirts no longer appeal to me, and I wanted to offer items which I feel
I see the value of.
Fundamentally, I am only
looking at items that represent my own values, so there is no sense to me of
only dealing in ‘sellable items’ or ‘items which are in fashion’. What I think
is beautiful and what I can recognize as of intrinsic value happens to be the
Japanese style. In fact, some items are not particularly Japanese style at
all.
Is there
a message you want to deliver through your items?
I think each article of
clothing should have a unique character just like each person has. Often
customers tell me that their children have become unafraid of going to the
nursery or the T- shirts gave the opportunity for mothers to talk to each other
at the routine health checkups. These items of clothing are very strong in
character therefore mothers use them as a talking point. I am glad if children
and their parents enjoy wearing my clothes.
It would
be nice if these items lead people to enjoy everyday life. Finally, please let
us know of your future plans.
At the moment, we are only
dealing with hand-drawn T- shirts and occasionally we make hand drawn bags, but
in the near future, we would like to deal with ‘denim’ and ‘pottery’, too.
Now I have 3 workshops,
one in Kyoto, one in Otsu and one in Himeji, but ideally, I would like to have
my main workshop somewhere where there is a natural water well and lots of clean
air. Trivial though it might seem, I’m very fussy about the water and air. Also,
I would like to learn more about dyeing. To fuse ‘dyeing’ and ‘hand-drawing’ is
one objective.
"Uta, On, Kanadé" Product lineup
Kids
   
Babies
 
Adults
  
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logiciel ecommerce