That was when you two first got toghther and geared up towards the common goal you are still trying to achieve?

S.K: I had many friends who longed to do almost the same as us and soon joined toghether. The rest is the history. Those ones like interior design did interior design with Kenichiro. I travelled around the world to buy clothes and stuff.

S.K: Starting with our several fashion designers and interior designers, we managed the shop well. Everyone left the shop to do what they had been planning to do later. Meanwhile I began making clothes. Sooner or later, you have to realise the importance of the relationship between clothing and art. And I learned from POPEYE how I should tackle it. Then, I happened to be covered by a mag, Ten. There were some great photo works introduced in the mag. Those were by Yoshihara who later joined us.
We expanded to the field of visuals such as a series of adverts for Dazed & Confused, art, installation work etc..

You have your own shops introduced on the web site. I feel that you consider the shops to be your works themselves.

K.K: Ever since we launched PIED PIPER, we’ve been trying to show all our creation including the interior, even atomosphere at the shops, people who work there as well as clothes as part of a constant work each.
We are always putting our all in that.

It’s almost like a DJ whose art is to select tunes.

K.K: Yeah, after having seen thousands of fashion articles around the world, we had a bit of problem that we couldn’t find out better ones than we’d had then. Like, once we bought a really stunning leather jacket by Kohji Tatsuno which had been shown at Paris Collection. We paid four hundred thousand yen for it. But, it was far too expensive. Who would buy it even for four hundred and ten thousand yen, you know. It’s no good that you deal only in expensive articles and sell them away. If you can’t put them on, it doesn’t make sense.
On the other hand, you can have to pay a fortune for good stuff.
So, we decided to make it by ourself and sell at reasonable price. That was also how Pied Piper started.

Now you have three shops, and each shop seems to have a different character.

K.K: That’s right. It imples sort of a story of the PIED PIPER indicating kidnapping, which means gathering all kids in town at Pied Piper. It’s actually a very underground intention hidden in our idea. Frankly speaking, as for the shop of Pied Piper, we don’t really consider society to be important as it’s closed against society. But, we welcome today’s youth who might change the world in the future.
And A NEW SHOP is targetted at higher generation than Pied Piper that are totally unaware of society. Even if they’ve ignored how people have to be committed to doing what they don’t always want to do in order to make a living, they’ll have to see what society is all about through our activity…In a word, A New Shop reflects a role of a church. We never believe that society which is generally believed to be right is right. So, A New Shop aims to go ahead with something new to change the world.

K.K: It’s a church-like place. Pied Piper is where worshippers gather around. Then, they receive teachings at A New Shop. Their various opinions and creativity bear fruit at SYNERGIE.(Synchroised Energy) That’s the whole story.

But, the story will go on, won’t it? (laugh)

K.K: Exactly.(laugh)

The church-like A New Shop is, in essence, supposed to be a place for the worshipper to be purified?

K.K: Yes. Not like Pied Piper shop, A New Shop is widely opened to society. Though it can fully correspond to society, we create things regardless of the social superficiality.