Hikaru Katano

Hikaru Katano is the Japanese designer and founder of SHARE SPIRIT, born around 1964–65. He left Japan for England at nineteen and used the move to develop the English fluency that later allowed him to travel and source independently. A period profile describes an early leather purchase in London that he wore and repaired for roughly sixteen years, an object Katano came to regard as a record of his own development. Back in Japan he operated the earlier label Grace through the late 1980s and 1990s, building a practice around distressed leather, jewellery, vintage objects and material gathered through travel.

Katano established SHARE SPIRIT in Tokyo in 2000. The label opened with a Daikanyama boutique-museum shaped by his collection of furniture, artefacts and textiles, while early Paris activity connected the work to Shimji and later to Tranoï and Showroom Romeo. His wife Shoko Katano was the master patternmaker through the formative and mature periods, converting his sketches and irregular material sources into garment structures. Katano remained the label’s principal designer as its vocabulary expanded across womenswear, SHARE SPIRIT HOMME, jewellery, leather, graphic jersey and embroidered outerwear.

His career has continued without a formal handover of design authorship. In 2022 he signed the launch statement for SHARE SPIRIT’s first directly operated online store as representative director and designer, and he has continued to appear in person at collection-order events. By 2026 the brand was issuing new Spring/Summer product, presenting an Autumn/Winter collection through BORDEAUX in Osaka and maintaining direct sales alongside Royal Flash and other specialist retailers.

Katano treats clothing as something that acquires value through duration. Repair, fading, abrasion and patina are part of his vocabulary, informed by the long-worn leather trousers he bought in England and repeatedly stitched back together. SHARE SPIRIT extends that attitude through waxed and distressed leather, washed cotton, frayed jersey, aged hardware, vintage military garments and fabric combinations that make a new piece feel already connected to another time.

His travel practice is grounded in materials, objects and working relationships. Katano has described pursuing vicuña knowledge and old textiles in Peru, collecting historic embroidery and military components, and building a long relationship with leatherworkers in Mexico who produced fine braided lacings for his clothes. The objects are not left as souvenirs: they are cut, mounted, printed around, laced into, or used as construction prompts. Shoko Katano’s patternmaking supplied the technical counterweight to this collecting practice, allowing fragile or irregular sources to enter complex tailoring and draped garments.

Across clothing and jewellery, Katano moves between severity and ornament. Military jackets, rider forms, tuxedo shirts and structured trousers sit beside silk-bamboo drape, lace, sukajan embroidery, skull metalwork, religious imagery and hand-drawn or collaged graphics. Adjustable lacing, elongated layers, free sizing and oversized proportions weaken rigid gender boundaries without turning fit into an afterthought. The continuity of the work lies in that combination of field-found material, controlled patternmaking, surface ageing and objects designed to carry visible traces of use.