Fashion is something that can empower people. It's a form of culture that should be accessible to everyone, requiring neither special knowledge nor status. But there are also things within fashion that, at times, we should understand - rules of etiquette and the appropriate time, place, and occasion, for example, or dress codes. The same can be said of military clothing. Much of it has been modernized purely as fashion, but tracing its origins reveals that quite a few pieces have backgrounds that make it difficult to treat them too casually. This season, Graphpaper once again confronted the nature of military clothing. Anyone living in the present day who has felt even a little anxiety or frustration about the international situation will probably understand why, without needing it explained. Until now, Takayuki Minami has built Graphpaper's world largely from highly personal perspectives and experiences. What did he see in this subject, and how did he turn it into this season's clothes?
Interview & Text by Rui Konno
―I've seen the collection, and more than ever this season it gives a strong impression of utility wear.
Takayuki Minami (hereafter Minami): Yeah. To put it in broader terms, even I have been feeling the effects of war more and more in everyday life, and I've developed a kind of personal anti-war sentiment. Around that time, I came across a really good book, FASHION ARMY by Matthieu Nicol, which takes a very serious look at military clothing as fashion, and that became one of the triggers. Military clothing was originally clothing designed to help people in their lethality against others. I started wondering what would happen if you stripped away all of those functions.
―I see. Quite apart from that serious side, those functions are also excessive for everyday life.
Minami: In the cities where we actually live, they're over-spec and there's not much opportunity to use them. And obviously people don't choose military clothing for those original purposes either. So, while taking inspiration from it, we deliberately used fabrics more associated with menswear, for example. Turning things upside down like that is one of our approaches, so we applied the same thinking to the design. That's how we arrived at the term "FIELDWORK," although in itself it doesn't have some particularly deep meaning.
―So you stripped away the functional elements from functional clothing.
Minami: Right. We kept the things we felt were necessary, but removed everything else. So it's not simply a matter of saying, "We used military clothing as the design base for this collection." It's more about taking clothing that would originally have had military-level specifications and reducing it to the minimum functions that menswear actually needs. What we're ultimately making is fashion, so the final result has to work as fashion.
―A lot of your previous collections have been inspired by things you've personally encountered, such as art and craft, so it feels somewhat unusual that this time a broader external factor, the surrounding environment, has been such an important source of inspiration.
Minami: Honestly, when it comes to war, even someone like me can't help but be affected by it. I have my own thoughts about the social situation, but I'm not really the kind of person who takes the initiative to speak out. So yes, the starting point this time came from that emotional reaction, but I didn't want to put some kind of message into the collection. It was simply that those feelings made me think, "I want to try making clothes that don't serve to harm others".
―It sounds like a statement, but it's actually something quite different.
Minami: That's simply something on our side, as the people making the clothes. I don't mind at all if that doesn't come across to the person wearing them.
―Being particular about how you make something and forcing that intention onto the wearer are two different things.
Minami: Right. We already buy all kinds of military clothing and gear as references for product development, including things we don't always understand at first. We collect them to study what they were designed for and how they're constructed. Then we remove the things that aren't necessary for city wear, avoid excessive decoration, and perhaps preserve one element as an iconic detail. That's where we started this time. This coat, for example, is based on a British military trench coat.
―Using military clothing as a reference has become a standard approach in contemporary fashion, but simply changing the perspective seems like it could produce a completely different result.
Minami: That applies beyond military clothing too. We're always thinking about how to research something from the past and then make it our own. I think this turned into a particularly interesting collection in that regard. For example, we used thick moleskin and wool fabrics more commonly associated with tailoring, but then we applied a sheet to the reverse to make them waterproof.
- Waterproof field parka
―So that was a function you felt was worth adding and ensuring.
Minami: I thought it would be good if it could protect you from a reasonable amount of rain and wind.
―I wondered why it had that slightly unusual firmness, but that explains it.
Minami: The outer fabric is wool, so the wool itself isn't water-repellent. This bag is similar. The military bag it's based on has a completely different shape, and we reworked it while retaining the divided storage compartments.
―This bag retains a lot of the original functionality.
Minami: It does. And in that sense, one of my favorite functions of military gear is the straps and harnesses for carrying things on your back. They aren't visible from the outside, but simply having them inside strengthens that military nuance. Rather than adding military-style details that announce themselves on the outside, I think it feels more like Graphpaper to have them hidden inside while keeping the exterior simple and tailored.
- A strap that lets you carry the coat on your back once you've taken it off
―So those carrying straps were adopted as a symbol of that philosophy?
Minami: No, I actually use them all the time. They're really useful. In winter, even if it's cold outside, it gets hot as soon as you go indoors. And when I'm walking somewhere, I often get hot and want to take off my outerwear, but I hate carrying it around in my hands. So having this detail means my hands stay free even when I take my coat off. It's incredibly convenient.
―Because the outside is so simple, that detail becomes even more noticeable.
Minami: Right. And speaking of simplicity, take an MA-1. You could obviously make it from water-repellent nylon, but we deliberately made one in suiting fabric and then washed it to give it a crumpled appearance, so visually it doesn't look functional at all. With military trousers, we remove things like the side cargo pockets and the tourniquet, but keep the action pleats at the knee because they preserve freedom of movement and give you an appropriate amount of room.
―Speaking of which, do you ever actually use a tourniquet in everyday life?
Minami: Of course not. (Laughs.) So we spent a lot of time looking at military pieces and asking ourselves, "What here do we actually not need?" That way of thinking and that approach are reflected throughout the collection. I've always liked Helmut Lang's attitude, so I think his minimalism and his approach to military clothing have influenced me to some extent. When I was younger, I often wondered, "Oh, they're actually keeping this detail?"
―Are most of the fabrics original this season as well?
Minami: Yes. I like developing fabrics. We made saxony in Super 160's, for example, and developed wool doeskin too. They're refined fabrics, the sort of thing you'd normally use for formalwear, but I was thinking about how to make something easygoing from them.
- Saxony fabric woven in Super 160's
―You can still sense Graphpaper's usual pace and independence in those details, but knowing how this collection began inevitably makes you think about the relationship between society and fashion.
Minami: Well, I'm not particularly interested in fashion itself to begin with. I don't really have much desire anymore to dress up or make myself look cool, and I wear pretty much the same kind of clothes every day. What we propose is obviously fashion, so it's a contradiction, but as I've gotten older, maybe I've simply become less interested in clothes and fashion than I used to be. At the same time, I may have gradually become more influenced by society and the world around me. And if there's something outside fashion that captures my interest, I'd probably make clothes around that instead.
―So the way you relate to clothes, and the distance you keep from them, changes with age too.
Minami: I suppose so. You gain more from life as you go along. When you're young, there are lots of things you want but can't afford, whereas now I don't really have much desire to own things anymore. I guess that's part of getting older. And that's precisely why I find it difficult to understand when young people don't want to learn about things they don't know or try something new. Time is limited, and I think you might regret it once that time has passed.
―I don't think we should frame this as some kind of generational superiority, but it's true that there are fewer opportunities to feel the same intensity in the fashion scene that existed in the past.
Minami: Maybe there's simply too much information now. But even so, I want people to understand that what you find after searching for yourself and digging deeper is completely different in terms of resolution. This collection, too, isn't just surface-level military-inspired clothing. We actually looked at the real thing and thought about what was necessary and what wasn't, and then built the clothes from there. You don't need to buy Graphpaper's clothes. But I do think that encountering something new is probably never a waste.
―I've never really thought of you as someone who makes clothes from a position of speaking directly to the wearer, so this felt particularly fresh.
Minami: Even looking back at the themes of our previous collections, they've mostly been very personal. This time, the starting point is something connected to society and the world around us, but emotionally it's still personal. I've realized that I'm genuinely angry about war right now... and I can't lie to myself about that feeling.
