Introduction
Shintaro Yamamoto is a Japanese footwear designer born in Tokyo on 28 August 1974. He moved to Britain in 1990 as a teenager, left boarding school in Devon and settled in London, where early-1990s Soho placed him close to music, punk fashion and street culture. In 1995 he enrolled in three-dimensional design at Camberwell College of Arts. His connection to The Old Curiosity Shop began informally around the same period and became a formal studio assistantship in 1996, working with Daita Kimura and Ian Reid in the lineage of the late shoe designer John Moore.
At The Old Curiosity Shop, Yamamoto learned hand-lasting and a form of shoemaking that treated discarded or unlikely material as part of design culture. He returned to Japan in 2000 and entered the Asakusa footwear industry, working across factory production, OEM planning, troubleshooting and sales through companies including DECORTE and Magnum. The experience gave him a second education in the industrial organisation of shoes: the division of labour among last makers, upper stitchers, lasters, sole specialists and commercial production teams. In 2008 he combined that manufacturing knowledge with his London background to launch KIDS LOVE GAITE.
Yamamoto remains the label’s founder and official Designer, and is listed as representative of its operating company Faith Co., Ltd. His work now spans KIDS LOVE GAITE’s own seasonal ranges, K.L.G. WHITE and footwear created for other designers. A recurring collaboration with Rei Kawakubo’s COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS began in 2023 for the SS24 collection and expanded Yamamoto’s international profile, followed by projects with doublet, KIDILL, Undercover and JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN. He continues to prototype and develop lasts within a Japanese craft network while maintaining the company’s atelier-office base in Sasazuka, Tokyo.
Design ethos
Yamamoto’s design language was formed by two very different shoe cultures. London taught him to distrust the idea that tradition has to look respectable: The Old Curiosity Shop used John Moore’s lasts, hand skills and unlikely materials to push classical footwear into post-punk territory. Asakusa taught him how those ideas survive production, where tolerances, lasting, stitching, bottoming and sales all determine whether an experimental shoe can actually exist beyond a sample.
He tends to begin with a familiar archetype and alter one or two structural assumptions until the whole shoe changes character. A double monk becomes heavier and more graphic; a brogue grows an extended sole; smooth leather meets roughout across a split upper; a derby appears to have two feet; a combat boot bends or breaks its expected profile. Goodyear welting, cement construction, crepe, Ridgeway and Vibram soles are all available to the same practice. Method follows the required form, with the last and the relationship between upper and sole doing much of the visual work.
External commissions have made dialogue part of that method. Kawakubo can set an apparently impossible functional brief; a partner such as Mountain Research can bring graphics and field-wear references; doublet can introduce humour and inflation; KIDILL can supply punk abrasion. Yamamoto converts those prompts into footwear through proportion, leather behaviour and construction. The collaboration succeeds when both identities remain legible in the finished object and the shoe still carries the physical authority of something engineered to be walked in.
Disclaimer
Career history
2026
The 2026 project renewed a relationship first visible in the 2018 anniversary network. Long combat boots used Tempesti Elbamatt Liscio leather and Vibram soles, bringing KIDS LOVE GAITE construction into Arashi Yanagawa’s current collection.
2026
The KIDILL project brought KIDS LOVE GAITE footwear into Hiroaki Sueyasu’s abrasive punk vocabulary, using studded shoes as part of the collection’s complete silhouette.
2026
The steel-capped derbies placed Yamamoto’s formal footwear vocabulary inside Jun Takahashi’s pre-fall menswear. The work is a collection footwear credit and is kept separate from KIDS LOVE GAITE’s own seasonal range.
2025
The AW25 collaboration returned to the in-heel boot idea from Yamamoto’s pre-brand years, converting an early shared experiment into a current Japan-made product.
2025
For doublet FW25, KIDS LOVE GAITE made derbies whose zipped uppers opened into cartoon mouths. The AW26 AIR collection extended the collaboration through an inflatable cowhide derby, using footwear construction itself as part of doublet’s humour.
2023
Rei Kawakubo’s first brief led Yamamoto towards the double-foot derby of SS24, developed through direct conceptual dialogue and KIDS LOVE GAITE shoemaking. The relationship continued through AW24, SS25, AW25, SS26, AW26 and the completed SS27 presentation, producing projecting soles, ruffles, broken combat forms and double-layer uppers alongside commercial double-branded releases.
2022
The first documented K.L.G. WHITE release was an officer shoe developed with JOURNAL STANDARD using recycled leather and Goodyear-welt construction. It introduced the new line through an accessible retail collaboration.
2022
K.L.G. WHITE gave Yamamoto a lighter, more everyday and lower-priced line beside the main collection. Its first documented product was a JOURNAL STANDARD officer shoe in AW22, followed by the line’s full-scale seasonal launch for SS23.
2022
PASCAL MARIE DESMARAIS and KIDS LOVE GAITE developed a limited tassel loafer with domestic sewing and a focused Shibuya Parco and online release. The project sat outside the normal seasonal line as a compact collaboration product.
2020
KIDS LOVE GAITE reworked the Desert Boot and Desert Trek for an AW20 season informed by Mod culture. The project placed two British casual-footwear standards inside Yamamoto’s own London-derived language of proportion and material.
2018
For K.L.G. meets FRIENDS, KIDS LOVE GAITE worked with ENALLOID on custom acetate eyewear that extended the anniversary network beyond footwear. The project made the tenth anniversary a network of distinct co-authored objects instead of a single commemorative product.
2018
For K.L.G. meets FRIENDS, KIDS LOVE GAITE worked with BED J.W. FORD on sharply altered footwear forms aligned with the label’s avant-garde tailoring. The project made the tenth anniversary a network of distinct co-authored objects instead of a single commemorative product.
2018
For K.L.G. meets FRIENDS, KIDS LOVE GAITE worked with TAKEO KIKUCHI on hybrid formal footwear that pushed classic tailoring shapes through heavier KIDS LOVE GAITE proportion and welt details. The project made the tenth anniversary a network of distinct co-authored objects instead of a single commemorative product.
2018
For K.L.G. meets FRIENDS, KIDS LOVE GAITE worked with JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN on tailored footwear and python-print leather accessories that connected Yamamoto’s formal lasts with Arashi Yanagawa’s sharp menswear. The project made the tenth anniversary a network of distinct co-authored objects instead of a single commemorative product.
2018
For K.L.G. meets FRIENDS, KIDS LOVE GAITE worked with Mountain Research on a nine-hole horsehide boot that reworked the Two Face split with smooth and roughout leather, distressing and laser-etched branding. The project made the tenth anniversary a network of distinct co-authored objects instead of a single commemorative product.
2018
The tenth-anniversary season turned Yamamoto’s professional network into a coordinated set of footwear and accessory projects. Mountain Research, JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, TAKEO KIKUCHI, BED J.W. FORD and ENALLOID each brought a distinct design context into the KIDS LOVE GAITE system.
2015
KIDS LOVE GAITE and SUB-AGE developed co-branded creepers, loafers and dress shoes with oversized rubber soles and strong brogue detailing, bringing Yamamoto’s formal shoe construction into a darker streetwear context.
2014
CANNABIS became a recurring retail partner for custom KIDS LOVE GAITE footwear. Projects included a narrowed side-gore boot and the 2018 Flex Double Monk, whose lighter internal welt construction reduced rigidity while retaining the label’s formal profile.
2012
The ILA. x KIDS LOVE GAITE project at ELIMINATOR treated formal leather shoes as a surface for hand-applied stencil work, joining a retailer-led art intervention to Yamamoto’s established Goodyear footwear.
2012
KIDS LOVE GAITE and Tricker’s combined Northampton bench-made Goodyear construction with Yamamoto’s two-tone treatment in the M5617 derby boot. Water-repellent Gaucho Repello suede and contrasting panels placed the label’s colour logic onto a British heritage last.
2012
The experimental Conceptual Line opened with the split-material Two Face idea, while the Classic Line maintained established double monks, brogues and core colourways. The division allowed Yamamoto to protect a more radical seasonal space alongside dependable footwear archetypes.
2011
The Style Co. alignment expanded KIDS LOVE GAITE’s commercial infrastructure and brought Yamamoto additional OEM and consulting work. The arrangement gave the footwear label broader showroom and wholesale capacity without transferring its design direction away from Yamamoto. Its later endpoint is not used to define the current company structure, which is now represented by Faith Co., Ltd.
2008
Yamamoto continues to direct lasts, materials, construction ideas and the overall character of KIDS LOVE GAITE while participating closely in prototypes and external footwear projects. Faith Co., Ltd. currently operates the label, with Yamamoto listed as company representative.
2008
KIDS LOVE GAITE brought Yamamoto’s London hand-shoemaking background and Asakusa production experience into one label. Its first commercial season used British dress-shoe archetypes, heavy soles and altered proportion to establish the footwear language that has remained central to the brand.
2004
The 2004 prototype work with Tomoaki Okaniwa tested an in-heel boot inside the Asakusa production environment. It is an early example of Yamamoto using shoemaking collaboration to push a conventional boot construction beyond its expected profile.
2000
Yamamoto’s years with Asakusa factories, DECORTE and Magnum exposed him to the industrial side of shoes: factory-floor supervision, pattern and last coordination, OEM work and commercial sales. This experience supplied the production knowledge needed to build an independent label around technically demanding footwear.
1996
The Old Curiosity Shop connected Yamamoto to the design lineage of John Moore and the House of Beauty and Culture. Working with Daita Kimura and Ian Reid, he learned hand-lasting on inherited wooden forms and used materials such as mail sacks, billiard felt and industrial canvas in bench-made shoes.
1995
Camberwell gave Yamamoto a formal setting for three-dimensional and spatial experimentation, including performance-oriented work. His later footwear developed from this object-based training as much as from conventional shoe practice.
1990
Yamamoto arrived in Britain at fifteen, initially attending boarding school in Devon before relocating to London. Life in Soho exposed him to the music, street style and post-punk environment that would later inform KIDS LOVE GAITE’s treatment of formal footwear.
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