Introduction
Isamu Katayama was born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, in 1965 and moved to Tokyo in 1983 at the age of eighteen. His early relationship with leather was personal as well as practical: his father rode motorcycles and wore leather, and around 1985 Katayama joined a Tokyo bag manufacturer to work with the material every day. He spent roughly fourteen years in bag production, building experience in hides, hardware, sewing and manufacturing before establishing his own company.
In 1999 he founded BACKLASH Inc. and launched ISAMU KATAYAMA BACKLASH. The label grew through Japanese select shops, opened a direct store in Daikanyama in 2003 and began presenting to international buyers in Milan and Paris in spring 2004. Across the following decade Katayama developed an exhibition-led fashion practice centred on garment-dyed leather, expanding from riders jackets into footwear, bags, denim, fabric garments and specialist material programmes.
Collaborations with mastermind JAPAN, The Viridi-anne and Yohji Yamamoto broadened the contexts for that leather work, and BACKLASH marked its twentieth anniversary with its first domestic runway in Tokyo in 2019. Katayama continues to direct the label, overseeing its seasonal and 2nd collections, made-to-order work, specialist lines and direct retail operation. His name also remains attached to the business itself as the responsible person for BACKLASH Inc.’s current e-commerce operation.
Design ethos
Katayama designs from the material outward. BACKLASH’s signature process constructs a leather garment before dyeing or washing it, allowing the hide to shrink around fixed zippers and hardware. Waves in the closures, compressed grain and irregular colour emerge directly from that process, giving each finished piece a slightly different physical resolution.
His years in bag production remain visible in the density of the hardware, the emphasis on durability and the treatment of jackets, trousers, bags and footwear as objects expected to change through use. Vegetable tanning, white tanning, garment dyeing and abrasion are matched to the behaviour of specific hides, and riders jackets or elongated leather silhouettes provide recurring forms that can absorb those material variations from season to season.
Katayama has expanded this language into several distinct product systems. The Line pushes leather and silver into a made-to-order luxury register; THE DENIM uses distressing, repair and leather contrast to develop jeans as a specialist category; the Yohji Yamamoto collaboration places BACKLASH leather against a looser, more architectural pattern language. Across each strand, the central concern remains the life of the material: how leather contracts, creases, transfers colour, acquires patina and becomes more individual through wear.
Disclaimer
Career history
2024
HEROES — Portraits by HIRO KIMURA ran in Daikanyama from 23 to 28 July 2024 around the Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME × BACKLASH collaboration. Kimura’s portraits extended the fashion project into a dedicated exhibition, accompanied by an opening-day after-event at SPACE ODD.
2024
The nine-style 2024SS Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME × ISAMU KATAYAMA BACKLASH project renewed the collaboration through a clear division of craft. Yohji Yamamoto supplied the pattern and silhouette language, BACKLASH handled the leather production, and Katayama styled the accompanying photo book.
2023
BACKLASH Inc. opened BACKLASH OSAKA in Kitahorie on 25 August 2023 after a reception two days earlier. The store gave the company a second direct exhibition point and established the Tokyo–Osaka rhythm used for subsequent seasonal order events.
2022
BACKLASH introduced THE DENIM with the 2023 2nd Collection in November 2022. The denim-specialist line then became a recurring part of the 2nd programme and remains present in the house’s current product structure.
2020
BACKLASH staged the 2021 2nd Collection order exhibition on 5–6 December 2020. The intermediate programme became a recurring part of the calendar and later provided a regular setting for The Line, THE DENIM and specialist collaboration capsules.
2019
BACKLASH NIGHT II DECADES celebrated the label’s twentieth anniversary at Ebisu The Garden Hall on 24 October 2019. Archival and new garments appeared together in the brand’s first domestic runway, turning two decades of leather work into a live retrospective.
2019
The Autumn/Winter 2019 project with The Viridi-anne brought BACKLASH leather processing into a technical, anatomically cut menswear system. It arrived during a period of expanding collaboration immediately before the brand’s twentieth-anniversary runway.
2018
BACKLASH launched its Yohji Yamamoto collaboration in October 2018 as part of the twentieth-anniversary period. The relationship continued through seasonal collections, Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME projects, accessories and special releases under the XX Yohji Yamamoto name.
2018
Ballet by. BACKLASH formed part of the Spring/Summer 2019 order-exhibition programme as a dedicated womenswear line. The name later disappeared from the house’s active collection structure, leaving Spring/Summer 2019 as a clear surviving point in its history.
2014
BACKLASH presented Autumn/Winter 2014–15 at Kogan Gallery in Paris on 19 January 2014. The gallery setting continued the international exhibition model that had framed the label’s European seasonal activity since its 2004 debut.
2012
The 2012 mastermind JAPAN collaboration placed BACKLASH leather work within Japan’s high-end dark streetwear scene. It broadened the cultural setting for Katayama’s material practice during a mature phase of the brand’s development.
2009
Koichi Makino’s ISAMU KATAYAMA = ARTISANAL LIFE was completed and released in 2009 after an extended production period. The film gave Katayama’s workshop culture and leather methods a sustained public portrait outside the seasonal collection cycle.
2004
In spring 2004 BACKLASH began presenting collections to international buyers in Milan and Paris. The exhibitions added European wholesale to a business previously built through Japanese select shops and established the overseas presentation model used through much of the following decade.
1999
Katayama has directed ISAMU KATAYAMA BACKLASH from its foundation through its current collection system. His authorship links the early garment-dyed leather practice to The Line, THE DENIM and the long-running Yohji Yamamoto programme.
1999
Isamu Katayama founded BACKLASH Inc. and ISAMU KATAYAMA BACKLASH in Tokyo in 1999. His years in bag manufacturing supplied the technical foundation for an independent fashion practice centred on leather construction and processing.
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