{"id":74,"date":"2026-06-13T17:22:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T08:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/?p=74"},"modified":"2026-06-13T17:23:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T08:23:01","slug":"04-the-pursuit-of-timeless-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"#04 The Pursuit of Timeless Quality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shindai Usuki has a confession: he\u2019s been making essentially the same thing for thirty years. \u201cProducts I made back then and what I\u2019m creating now are really unchanged, \u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201cI realized I couldn\u2019t make these things in my current work, \u201d he says. So in 1999, he opened a small vintage and remake shop in Nakameguro, determined to create on his own terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What he wanted to build was simple yet ambitious: \u201cA good sweatshirt that Japan can be proud of. \u201dThe revelation came through handshakes and factory visits. Leaving his desk behind, Usuki sought out Japan\u2019s textile artisans: knitters, dyers, craftsmen whose decades of experience gave them an almost supernatural feel for materials. While Okayama owns denim\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s embraced sustainability, recycling scraps into new textiles and creating \u201cnon-dyed\u201d pieces that celebrate cotton\u2019s natural hues. Currently 40 percent of production, he plans to eventually transition entirely to sustainable materials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That stubborn consistency he mentioned at the start? After three decades, it looks more like vision than limitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shindai Usuki has a confession: he\u2019s been making essentially the same thing for thirty years. \u201cProducts I made back then and what I\u2019m creating now are really unchanged, \u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensider.jp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}