Kapital

Kapital was founded in Kojima, Japan's denim town, in 1984 by Toshikiyo Hirata, a former martial arts instructor who fell for American denim while teaching in the US and came home to open a denim factory, then a vintage store. His son Kiro joined in the early 2000s, having worked as a designer for 45R, and pushed the label beyond straight denim into layered patchwork, folk references and hand-finished detail. Kapital jeans get repaired with boro stitching, chore coats are dyed with persimmon tannin until stiff, and shirts are pieced from five vintage flannels sewn into one. Fading and fraying are left in, not disguised.