In February 2016, at Première Vision Paris—the world’s largest textile trade show held in the suburbs of Paris—
Shunsuke Teranishi, then a designer at Hermès, happened upon a small display of tsumugi (a category of kimono textile).
He stood still, struck by its quiet beauty, and found himself breathless.

At a glance, the tsumugi appeared quiet and simple—yet within it, he discovered an exquisite play of subtle hues and their delicate combinations.
What moved him even more was the realization that the very threads of this fabric were still being hand-spun today.

A completely different timeline exists in the world of kimono, apart from fashion as we know it.

This quiet encounter would mark the beginning of the MIZEN project.

After that, Teranishi began returning to Japan during long holidays, traveling to weaving regions across the country
and deepening relationships with local artisans.

He came to believe:
These masterful materials, born of the finest handcrafts, can give rise to a new dimension of value in fashion—
one that follows an entirely different rhythm.

In today’s mainstream fashion, the designer stands at the top of the pyramid,
and craftsmanship is treated merely as a tool to realize their vision.

MIZEN envisions another world:
where artisans and their craftsmanship take center stage, and design is about letting craftsmanship speak at its fullest.

In today’s world, where material abundance surrounds us,
how many of the things we own can we say truly reveal the face of their maker?

Behind every piece of handcrafted work lies the presence of a human hand.
Its value does not lie in the hours it took to create,
but in the quiet richness of a connection—
where the one who lives with the piece and the one who made it are joined, heart to heart.

We believe this is the new form of spiritual luxury the world now longs for.

Launched in April 2022,
MIZEN is a project to create the next generation of luxury from Japan—
together with all who share this vision.

At MIZEN, we believe the true value of what we create lies not in what is seen,
but in what lingers quietly behind—
the land that nurtured the fabric, the hands that shaped it, and the stories woven into every thread.

Today’s fashion world moves at a relentless pace, driven by the pursuit of immediacy and visual impact.
In such a climate, traditional crafts—meant to be slow, deliberate, and human— rarely have a place to be seen, let alone valued.
The decline of these time-honored techniques is often attributed to their incompatibility with modern lifestyles—
But beneath the surface lies something deeper: an unconscious devotion to speed itself—
a shift in our collective mindset that has quietly reshaped what we value, and how we live.

That is why we choose to slow down.
To rediscover a rich and unfamiliar world—one that quietly emerges only when we let go of haste.

In Japan, there once existed a sensibility called appreciation of yohaku —the art of finding beauty in empty space.
It meant sensing what lies beneath the surface, imagining what is unspoken, and allowing the unseen to nourish the heart.
A quiet aesthetic refined over centuries, and deeply embedded in the Japanese way of being.

At MIZEN, we seek to awaken this fading sensibility—
reviving it through the time-honored crafts rooted across Japan, and sharing it with the world.
We believe that true richness lies in the quiet act of awakening to and filling these unseen spaces—
a kind of luxury defined by spiritual resonance and personal connection.

MIZEN seeks to carry the handwork of artisans and the quiet stories behind them into the form of garments,
and we continue to ask:
What new possibilities of fashion—and luxury—might emerge
when our creations are shaped to embody silence, evoke story, and give space for the unseen to breathe?