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ISSUE 20
Paris looms large in the imagination of Hiromichi Ochiai, the 39-year-old founder of Japanese streetwear label du jour FACETASM. Although his first runway show in the City of Lights only took place at the 2016 LVMH Award ceremony where he attended as a finalist, he has since shown two more times at Paris Fashion Week, following a long tradition of Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Chitose Abe, who have all capitalized on a special affinity for the old-world European capital. His own son, having just turned two, has already made the trip to Paris four to five times by Ochiai’s estimate, “Although I’m not sure if he would be able to remember, I just show him what I can as his father,” he adds. This, for better or worse, includes the increasing global recognition around Ochiai’s 10-year-old brand, which W Magazine Editorin-Chief Stefano Tonchi hailed as the next sacai for its fluency in the unconventional cutting and draping of experimental fabrics, rendered in punkinfused unisex designs. Its name refers to the many facets of a diamond, and belies Ochiai’s seemingly disjointed designs that come together to form a harmonious, if not slightly asymmetrical, whole. In comparison to his son’s transcontinental infancy, Ochiai spent a more physically grounded childhood in Tokyo, although his penchant for punk and rock ‘n’ roll music that made its way from the West naturally drew him to hotspots of these subcultures in Tokyo—record shops and underground music venues and vintage fashion stores—in neighborhoods such as Shimokitazawa and Ura-Harajuku. Ochiai would enroll in an apparel design course at the prestigious Bunka Fashion College, but after graduating in 1999 and struggling to find a role in fashion design, he settled at a textile company that handled fabric orders for the likes of UNDERCOVER and COMME des GARÇONS. Looking back, Ochiai says, the experience was invaluable for the multitude of
brands—and their respective strengths—that he was exposed to. “I used to think it may have been a longer route for me to become a designer, but now that I come to think of it, I think it was the best way for me.” While there, he would spend his free time with a crew of graffiti artists, often at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it movie theater in Shibuya called Uplink that showed progressive indie films from the likes of arthouse auteur Gus Van Sant, a personal favorite of Ochiai’s. “In the early days of building my brand, I would always think of how to express the way he looks at the world and the atmosphere he exudes, through fashion.” After eight years, Ochiai struck out on his own and founded FACETASM in 2007. Akin to the measured tempo of Ochiai’s own start in fashion,
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