SHINYAKOZUKA

SHINYAKOZUKA is a Tokyo-based menswear label founded by Shinya Kozuka in 2015. Kozuka returned to Japan after completing the BA Menswear course at Central Saint Martins in 2013, carrying forward a practice shaped by workwear, drawing and exaggerated proportion. The first collections were developed through Japanese mills, dyeing workshops and independent factories, with wide trousers, enlarged outerwear and hand-worked surfaces establishing the label’s early vocabulary.

Shimpei Kajiura formally joined the business in 2017 after advising Kozuka during its first seasons. Their division of labour became central to the company: Kozuka retained collection authorship, while Kajiura directed wholesale, production coordination, finance and retail operations. The structure supported the continuing Baggy trouser family, recurring collaborations with workwear and craft manufacturers, and the development of ORDINARY LIFE as a continuing line for everyday garments.

From Spring/Summer 2022, the main seasonal sequence was reorganised as numbered Issues and presented through increasingly site-specific runways. SMALL TRADES, the company’s directly operated Minami-Aoyama store and multibrand retail concept, opened in March 2022 and expanded in 2024. The label made its European runway debut at Pitti Uomo in Florence in January 2026 and followed with its first Milan runway in June, while design and operations remained based in Tokyo.

Kozuka describes the brand through “Picturesque Scenery”: collections begin with a written situation, drawing or painting before they become garments. The method privileges atmosphere and partial perception over literal themes. Recurrent terms including blur, vague, unclear and hidden describe a practice in which memory, imperfect sight and ordinary urban scenes are translated into silhouette, surface and colour.

The clothing enlarges familiar workwear and uniform types until their original function becomes less fixed. Deep pleats, rigid denim, cotton canvas, dense wool and industrial twill give the Baggy trousers, coats and shirt-jackets enough structure to stand away from the body. Hand painting, garment dyeing, abrasive finishes and deliberately irregular textiles interrupt that architecture, combining controlled Japanese manufacture with the slight deviations Kozuka values in a finished object.

The runway extends the same process into space. Outdoor plazas, an archery field, a rain-soaked pool environment, the National Stadium, the Science Museum and a snow-covered installation at Pitti have been used as settings for collections conceived as moving picture books. This spatial ambition is balanced by a disciplined product system: recurring trouser shapes, ORDINARY LIFE garments and carefully bounded collaborations keep the label’s conceptual work connected to a durable wardrobe.