Shimpei Kajiura

Shimpei Kajiura is a Japanese fashion director and business operator whose career joins department-store buying, lifestyle retail, international sales and independent brand management. After graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University in 2008, he worked in menswear buying at Isetan Shinjuku’s Re-style Plus, participated in the founding menswear team at Ron Herman under Sazaby League, and later handled sales and production work for V::room in New York.

Kajiura had met Shinya Kozuka while both were studying English in London and began advising the young SHINYAKOZUKA business during its early seasons. He formally joined the company in 2017. His documented remit covers wholesale strategy, regional stockist planning, finance, factory negotiation, production coordination and retail operations; institutional profiles vary between Director, Creative Director and corporate-director language.

At SHINYAKOZUKA and SMALL TRADES Co., Ltd., Kajiura built the operating structure around Kozuka’s collection practice. His work supported the Minami-Aoyama SMALL TRADES store, direct-to-consumer capsules, the expansion of domestic manufacturing relationships and the brand’s international showroom and runway activity. The available evidence does not support collection co-authorship, which remains with Kozuka.

Kajiura’s practice is organisational rather than garment-led. He converts a highly individual design proposition into a workable seasonal system by controlling price architecture, production timing, factory relationships, regional wholesale distribution and retail placement. This approach protects the specificity of Kozuka’s silhouettes while giving recurring products such as the Baggy trousers enough continuity to sustain the business.

His commercial method favours bounded growth over indiscriminate distribution. Regional stockist planning, direct retail through SMALL TRADES and carefully defined manufacturing collaborations give the label multiple routes to market without dividing it into unnecessary sub-brands. Kajiura’s contribution is therefore best understood as the operational framework that allows the design studio to remain concentrated and founder-authored.