#04 The Pursuit of Timeless Quality

Shindai Usuki has a confession: he’s been making essentially the same thing for thirty years. “Products I made back then and what I’m creating now are really unchanged, ” he admits with a self-awareness that reads as equal parts humility and quiet pride. For the founder of Riding High, this narrow focus has become his greatest strength.

Before launching his brand, Usuki was a freelance designer working for various labels, trapped in an industry obsessed with uniformity. Perfect rows of identical products were considered righteous. But Usuki loved the opposite: denim with holes, faded colors, coveralls splattered with paint, sweatshirts beaten soft by countless washes. “I realized I couldn’t make these things in my current work, ” he says. So in 1999, he opened a small vintage and remake shop in Nakameguro, determined to create on his own terms.

What he wanted to build was simple yet ambitious: “A good sweatshirt that Japan can be proud of. ”The revelation came through handshakes and factory visits. Leaving his desk behind, Usuki sought out Japan’s textile artisans: knitters, dyers, craftsmen whose decades of experience gave them an almost supernatural feel for materials. While Okayama owns denim’s reputation, he discovered Wakayama quietly dominating knit and woven production, creating fabrics that exist nowhere else on earth. These suppliers became true collaborators, their intuition shaping his designs.

Since pivoting to sweatshirts and t-shirts in 2010, Usuki has brought his obsession to Pitti Uomo in Florence annually, introducing global buyers to Japanese fabric quality. More recently, he’s embraced sustainability, recycling scraps into new textiles and creating “non-dyed” pieces that celebrate cotton’s natural hues. Currently 40 percent of production, he plans to eventually transition entirely to sustainable materials.

That stubborn consistency he mentioned at the start? After three decades, it looks more like vision than limitation.

Back to Features