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Taishi Nobukuni

Known for his brands BOTANIKA and TAISHI NOBUKUNI, the fashion designer Taishi Nobukuni explores his creativity with high quality tailoring, attracting people with his overwhelming presence as a designer. Having studied the traditional British bespoke tailor under Charlie Allen and trained under John Galliano, his technique has been fully exercised on his brand TAISHI NOBUKUNI, making good use of traditional techniques with his own way of arranged way of tailoring. SHIFT interviewed the emerging designer Taishi Nobukuni at his 2010 SS collection.

Taishi NobukuniTaishi Nobukuni


You created BOTANIKA, a brand expressing comfort which many people would feel, out of TAISHI NOBUKUNI, a brand pursuing your personal preference. Please tell us about the change in your vision in fashion.

At some point on, I came to experience several different things sequentially including exercising yoga, surfing, vegetarianism, and practicing Buddhism. All that changed my life and sense of values. Thinking about the entire background rather than the foreground and details of things, I launched BOTANIKA since my new interests inspired the transition to something beyond personal intention. Putting it briefly, it meant I had grown up.
The consciousness could be divided into 2 different types: one is the conceptual understandings intellectually generated by building knowledge of the differences of things and the other is the sympathetic and intuitive awareness based on the integrity felt by one's heart. The series of lifestyles I came across was to link to restore the latter intuition and sympathy. Through the change, I had an experience as if I held a conversation with trees, feeling an awareness beyond verbal communication.


2010 S/S BOTANIKA2010 S/S BOTANIKA

2010 S/S BOTANIKA


It has been said that when dyeing organic cotton, it is difficult to achieve enough color. How do you approach the original dyeing for items of BOTANIKA?

What is toxic about dyeing is "mordant" a substance to set dyes rather than dye itself. To keep from using mordant, which contains high metal component to stabilize the natural dye, I use artificial "reactive dye". This represents a good example of a misunderstanding of the idea, natural=nontoxic. It's something like an eco bag made with chemical fertilized cotton. For print items, I tried various attempts using egg shells and squid ink as mordant. What I want to try in the future is to bleach without using bleaching agent.


2010 S/S TAISHI NOBUKUNI2010 S/S TAISHI NOBUKUNI

2010 S/S TAISHI NOBUKUNI


How did you get interested in tailoring?

I get excited just looking at lapels for collars. The interest could be something that I keep deep inside me. I am intrigued most by the sculptural form among other elements of clothing, and it could be said that lapels are one complete format expressing the form for men's fashion.
The late Kazuhiko Kato, a Japanese musician and producer, dressed fashionably. It was generated from the reliable relationship between Mr. Kato and one tailar for a long time. The tailor is totally familiar with the person knowing everything from his favorites to his body size. The more the tailer knows about a wearer, the more the wearer dresses fashionably. I was very impressed by his perfect outfits and his own sense of coordination.


05-06AW_TAISHI.jpg
05-06 A/W TAISHI NOBUKUNI


How do you advise how to dress?

To dress is to be yourself. It's not a technique. So I guess it depends on people. One thing to add is that you could enjoy adding a formal element to street style fashion, since most of the younger generation often dress down recently.


06-07AW_TAISHI.jpg
06-07 A/W TAISHI NOBUKUNI


Thinking about your design concept, I can get a sense of your clear intention and idea from your design. I heard that you mentioned in some magazine that "clothing is something to wrap your soul". How do you treat the act of "wearing" in your lifestyle?

You want to be popular with either the opposite sex or yourself, and I choose the latter. And there are symbols to express identity. One of the examples is the length of shorts. If shorter than knees, it looks the American casual style. If it longer than knees, it then looks more as B-boy and skater fashion. Likewise, how to dress represents your identity. People often check themselves by looking through the window of hearts, and that forms one's self consciousness, as if one became gentle as he/she wears environmentally friendly clothing.
"Wearing" is a physical necessity and is also something that has to do with expressing who you are, self identifying. In terms of self regulation, it means something for me. By wearing ecological pieces, I might be conscious of "myself who has ecological awareness". And if I express the consciousness through my behavior, things might be changed.


What messages would you like to deliver or express through your brand the most?

Even taking into account various things like environmental issues, I want to make something cool after all. That's about it. And it's nice that I could make a chance for people to think and feel various things through connections from people who wear my brand.


What did the name of your only shop “13″ originate from?

It's a question to the Western superstition. Is 4 really a bad number?


Taishi Nobukuni
Designer for BOTANIKA and TAISHI NOBUKUNI. Born in Kumamoto,1970.
Received Master's degree from the London Institute Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1996. After establishing TAISHI NOBUKUNI in 1998, he received the prize of "Mainichi Fashion Award, Newcomer Award" in 2005. He currently works on 2 lines BOTANIKA and TAISHI NOBUKUNI.
http://www.botanika.jp
http://www.taishi-nobukuni.co.jp

13 THIRTEEN
Address: 5-4-44 Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Opening Hours: 11:00-20:00
Tel: 03-5778-6113


Text: mina
Translation: Mariko Takei

Have a look at "Shift city guide tokyo" for your information guide of tokyo.
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