2026 A/W

"A New Symbol of MIZEN"

To open MIZEN’s debut collection, we chose KAMUI, crafted in double-face wool.
Until now, KAMUI has been developed through the combination of KIMONO textiles and knitwear. For this piece, however, we deliberately chose a material outside the world of kimono.

MIZEN is sometimes perceived as a brand that uses kimono textiles. Yet what we seek to place at the center is not kimono as a form in itself.
It is the materials and techniques behind it, and the value created by human hands.
For this debut collection, we therefore wanted to take a step beyond the image that had come to define MIZEN.
Clothing is usually understood through its finished appearance.
What techniques lie within it, what process of trial and refinement shaped it, and whose hands brought it into being—rarely is equal attention given to the story behind the finished garment.
At MIZEN, however, every material, pattern, and seam carries its own story.
We believe that the value of a garment resides precisely in what cannot be seen from its finished appearance alone: the time, the techniques, and the human presence behind it.
MIZEN continues to engage with traditional materials because they embody not only techniques passed down through generations, but also the history and culture of their regions, and the accumulated time of their makers.
We seek to bring this way of perceiving value—one that embraces the entire context behind an object—into contemporary fashion.
This does not mean creating clothes that resemble kimono.
It means creating contemporary fashion imbued with the values that live within the world of kimono.
This double-face wool KAMUI also holds a story concealed from view.
Double-face garments are generally finished through numerous processes carried out by hand. This piece, however, was constructed using an original method conceived by the craftsperson responsible for its making, employing a specialized sewing machine.
The starting point was the technique she had cultivated.
We asked how that technique could be placed at the center, and how it could be expressed through a MIZEN garment.
This piece was born from our pursuit of that question.
A KAMUI that began not with kimono textile, but with the technique of construction itself.
Moving beyond the boundaries of kimono, it places all forms of material, technique, and the makers behind them at the heart of creation—making it a symbol of a new beginning for MIZEN.

"A Different Angle on the Familiar"

At first glance, the look is quiet and mannish.
Yet its presence is shaped by a series of subtle reversals.
The top is MIZEN’s signature men’s classic shirt, styled back to front on a female model.

Details that would ordinarily appear at the front are shifted to the back, altering the way the neckline and shoulders are perceived. Without changing the garment itself, a simple reversal in the way it is worn gives a familiar piece an entirely different expression. Through the stylist’s eye, a possibility hidden within an existing garment was brought to the surface.
There is another change in this shirt—one that can only be noticed up close.
It is finished using MIZEN’s original “Loose Lock” construction, in which the overlocked threads normally concealed inside the garment are deliberately exposed on the surface. While preserving the precise structure of a classic shirt, the visible traces of construction introduce a subtle rawness and tension.
The focus is not solely on the finished surface, but also on how the garment is made.
It is an attempt to bring even the act of sewing itself into the design.
The trousers are finished at the hem with the double-cuff construction that has become a signature of MIZEN’s coats.
Raden-ori textile is placed inside the cuffs, concealing a glimmer of light that appears only in movement. Rather than displaying ornament across the surface, it is placed where it can be glimpsed and then disappear. This restrained way of revealing beauty is another expression that MIZEN has continued to pursue.

A mannish, pared-back silhouette.
Within it lie an asymmetric structure, construction visible only at close range, and material concealed inside the hems.
While carrying forward the language of MIZEN, this look was born from the subtle art of styling—one of fashion’s essential pleasures.

”The Architecture of of Leaving Things Open”

Within black, textures and structures quietly overlap.
The top is a new piece from the KIMONO-Knit series, where woven fabric and knitwear are seamlessly joined using advanced linking techniques.
For this third look, the knit is paired not with kimono textile but with Ribbon Weave, woven in Yosano, Kyoto. Made with distinctive ribbon-like yarns, this textile is typically recognised for the vivid colours created through hand-kasuri dyeing. For MIZEN, however, it has instead been dyed a deep black.

While black is often taken for granted in contemporary fashion, it carries a different significance in the world of kimono. It is not a colour that has always been readily available.
With colour restrained, what emerges instead is a quiet interplay of light and shadow, revealed through the overlapping warp and weft threads and the subtle irregularity of the textile's surface.

The front and back panels are connected along the right side, making full use of the fabric's limited width. On the opposite side, a deep slit keeps the structure open. Depending on how the buttons are fastened, the silhouette and layering shift, allowing a single garment to take on different expressions.
The generous V-neck can be worn on its own or layered over another garment. For this presentation, one shoulder was intentionally left exposed, further emphasising the openness of the structure.

The look is paired with one of MIZEN's signature pieces: the Layered Wide Trousers, also known as the "Hakama Trousers" for their distinctive silhouette. Rather than reproducing the form of traditional hakama, the design reinterprets their volume and movement as a contemporary garment.
Unlike conventional trousers, the fabric surrounding the legs is left open at the sides. Constructed as though the cloth were wrapped around the body, the hems open, fold and flow with every step, moving almost like a skirt.

This open structure is not merely aesthetic. Small buckle straps are incorporated to control the spread of the fabric when seated, introducing a practical function within its generous volume.
Kimono textile is placed at the front, while the remaining sections are made from wool that is structured yet supple, with excellent resistance to creasing. The result is a generous volume that never restricts the movement of the body.
The width of kimono cloth. The movement inherent in hakama. Beginning with these memories, the design does not reproduce traditional forms. Instead, it translates them into the structure of a contemporary garment.

The fabric is not made to conform to the body. Space is intentionally left for the fabric itself to move.
This idea of openness runs through both the top and the trousers. Rather than allowing convention to dictate the form of a garment, each structure emerges from the possibilities inherent in its materials and techniques. Within this approach lies the philosophy at the heart of MIZEN's way of making clothes.

”Same Clothes, Different Time — Fast and Slow”

Watch the same clothes move at different speeds. What changes isn't the clothing — it's what the viewer takes from it.

Starting with Look 5, the runway splits into two timelines. Two models, wearing the exact same piece, appear together — one moving Fast, the other Slow.

Follow the fast one, and you take in more information. Watch the slow one, and you catch the details, the depth, the story beneath the surface. Even with identical clothing, how you experience time changes how much value you receive.

Fashion today has grown accustomed to being judged at speed. But the value MIZEN finds in traditional craft lives on a different timeline entirely. So on this runway, we set two timelines side by side. Neither is more right than the other.

"Which will you choose, right now?"

That question is what these two models' footsteps carry.

"The Tie Has a Secret"

At first glance, just an ordinary necktie. But this slash tie hides a scheme that's quintessentially MIZEN.

A tie needs to wrap around the neck, so it requires a bit of give. That's why ties are typically cut on the bias — diagonally across the fabric. But try making one from kimono fabric just 38cm wide, and the seams multiply, showing up right where they're most visible. One glance, and it's obvious: the fabric simply wasn't wide enough.

So why not turn that seam into the design itself?

That's exactly what MIZEN did — placing the diagonal seam right where the eye lands first. The line rises from left to right, almost auspicious in its ascent. A line born from constraint became the design itself.

The classic shirt layered underneath carries the same thinking. Its sewing thread is dyed in kasuri, stitched with "loose-lock" — a technique that deliberately reveals the locking stitch usually hidden from view. Here, too, the construction itself takes center stage.

The simpler something looks, the closer it deserves to be examined.
Because a MIZEN story is always hiding somewhere inside.

"Wearing KIMONO, Outside the Kimono"

For 26AW, MIZEN stood on a fashion week runway for the first time. It was also a step outside the fixed image of "MIZEN as a kimono brand."

The KAMUI — a cape from the KIMONO knit series that has existed since before MIZEN's founding — had always been made from kimono fabric. This time, for the first time, we tailored it in ordinary shirt fabric.

Like Look 5, this look appears as part of "Fast & Slow," a recurring moment where two models wearing the exact same piece walk at different speeds.

Shirt fabric alone would make this just another piece, anywhere. What gives MIZEN's clothing its value is the story behind it. So we dyed the sewing thread itself in kasuri, and stitched it with "loose-lock" — a technique that deliberately reveals the locking stitch usually hidden from view. A simple shirt fabric becomes a piece where the stitching itself is the design.

Worn back to front, the kasuri-embroidered logo once placed at the back now shifts to the front, and the fabric's volume gathers into a knot across the now-open back. A familiar shirt takes on an entirely different expression through the styling alone.

Even outside kimono as a material, what MIZEN wears is always the story of KIMONO.

"Wearing KIMONO, Outside the Kimono"

For 26AW, MIZEN stood on a fashion week runway for the first time. It was also a step outside the fixed image of "MIZEN as a kimono brand."

The KAMUI — a cape from the KIMONO knit series that has existed since before MIZEN's founding — had always been made from kimono fabric. This time, for the first time, we tailored it in ordinary shirt fabric.

Like Look 5, this look appears as part of "Fast & Slow," a recurring moment where two models wearing the exact same piece walk at different speeds.

Shirt fabric alone would make this just another piece, anywhere. What gives MIZEN's clothing its value is the story behind it. So we dyed the sewing thread itself in kasuri, and stitched it with "loose-lock" — a technique that deliberately reveals the locking stitch usually hidden from view. A simple shirt fabric becomes a piece where the stitching itself is the design.

Worn back to front, the kasuri-embroidered logo once placed at the back now shifts to the front, and the fabric's volume gathers into a knot across the now-open back. A familiar shirt takes on an entirely different expression through the styling alone.

Even outside kimono as a material, what MIZEN wears is always the story of KIMONO.

Light Steeped in Mud

Onto honba Oshima Tsumugi, we deliberately layered military details — the kimono world's most iconic material meeting the bluntness of a uniform. That gap is the design behind this look. It became the most voluminous coat MIZEN has ever made.

This honba Oshima Tsumugi, too, was woven as an original bolt. Rooted in Oshima's traditional mud-dyeing, we arranged its kasuri lattice pattern in an ascending, staircase-like rhythm under the theme "Ascent." Hidden in the warp threads are touches of turquoise and yellow kasuri, tracing light as it climbs toward the sky.

Two models wear the exact same piece, walking at different speeds — and that difference showed even in how the coat moved. Walk slowly, and it sways quietly. Walk fast, and it billows wide. Beyond the kasuri pattern itself, the silk's suppleness and sheen reveal a different expression with every sway.

The shift in perspective that "Fast & Slow" creates — that, too, was the intention behind this staging.

MIZEN's Interpretation of a Setup

Shimoi Tsumugi from Iida, Shinshu — a technique unique to this artisan, where natural dyeing, kasuri, and hana-ori coexist within a single fabric. For this piece, we asked him to express light and color under the theme "Victory," woven into an original bolt.

This look is MIZEN's take on a setup. The collarless jacket keeps its silhouette purely Western. The bottom, on the other hand, pairs it with layered wide pants drawn from the structure of hakama. MIZEN rarely brings Japanese elements into its design with intention. But with these pants, for once, the silhouette itself began from Japan.

Around the neck sits the KIMONO knit tie, linking kimono fabric and knit together — a supporting piece that has existed since MIZEN's earliest days, and one the brand has never done without. Some argued that a more buttoned-up styling, with a shirt underneath, would be truer to MIZEN. But on the runway, impact took priority — and on the stylist's advice, this became the look.

Neither fully Western nor fully Japanese, this style stands somewhere in between. That, too, is one shape a MIZEN setup can take.

"The Chameleon KAMUI"

KAMUI reaches its most casually elegant form when paired top to bottom within the same KIMONO knit series — that's the classic styling MIZEN has proposed all along.

This look steps away from that. We paired it with a cotton broadcloth classic shirt and plain black wool pants — layering a knit, casual material, over a mannish, formal foundation.

In truth, KAMUI's character shifts depending on the texture of its kimono half.
That it can transform itself entirely, depending on what it's paired with, all within the same silhouette —

that's part of what makes this icon endure.

"There's No Way Japan Could Make That"

This setup is the answer to that sentence. Born for MIZEN's 2022 debut as part of the KIMONO knit series, it has since become one of the brand's defining, classic models. It applies the linking technique Teranishi learned at Hermès to the seam between kimono fabric and knit — making it one of the most technically demanding pieces in the entire series. A line of jewel-blue piping doesn't hide that seam, hard-won through struggle and doubt — it puts it proudly on display.

Kimono fabric, just 38cm wide, is rigid and unyielding by nature. The idea of letting knit compensate for that constraint is where this series began. Because the line is so difficult to replicate, it's treated as one of MIZEN's most exclusive offerings.

The kimono fabric is Ushikubi Tsumugi, made under the theme "Victory." At first glance, it looks plain — but look closer, and two colors of warp kasuri emerge like a quiet rain. Teranishi asked for two colors nearly indistinguishable from one another, and the weaver initially pushed back: "If you can barely tell it's kasuri, what's the point?" It's a pattern with a story behind it.

Some would say clothing only needs to look good — that no explanation is necessary. And that's a fair point. But there's a richness that comes from knowing the story behind it, too.

MIZEN's devotion to craft comes from believing in that warmth.

"Ushikubi Tsumugi × Raden Textile"

Ushikubi Tsumugi and raden — the pairing that led Teranishi to strike out on his own, making clothes from kimono. It calls back to a striking encounter at Première Vision Paris, in 2016.

That fateful combination is worn once more, in the flared trench coat that closes the runway. Its original form was born in Teranishi's earliest days, a piece loved by many over the years — now updated for this show.

Both the Ushikubi Tsumugi and the raden were made as originals, under the theme "Victory." The raden's small arrow-feather pattern on the collar, double cuffs, and left chest remains unchanged from the original — still giving off its quiet shimmer. This time, only the waist shaping and the flare of the hem were reworked.

At first glance, this coat looks simple. But its construction carries some of MIZEN's finest craftsmanship.
The raden's finished edges, the folded seams tucked into the side inserts — this breathtaking precision is only possible because a single artisan tailors the entire coat, start to finish, alone.

The closer you look, the more that first impression of "simplicity" unravels.

That, too, is one of the little tricks MIZEN's stories like to play.