There has been much talk in fashion recently about designers doing away with lofty abstract concepts and putting more focus directly on the clothes, but Stein’s Kiichiro Asakawa is the real deal. Ask the self-taught designer a hackneyed question about his inspiration, and he’ll hit back with a near-mathematical description of how each individual garment came into being, explaining at length how double-faced cashmere blazers were made especially thin by hand-stitching each side together, or giving a run-down of how he incorporated invisible magnetic fastenings so as to remove the fuss of buttons. He’s not being obtuse; his love for fashion comes simply from the garments themselves, and his work at Stein is an effort to reimagine wardrobe staples exactly into the way he thinks they should be.
“I want to make things just right,” the 37-year-old explained at a giant underground showroom in Tokyo, gently thumbing through the whopping 300 items (including different colorways) that he and his small design team had created for fall. At times his quest for perfection came close: Coats are Stein’s USP, and the maxi-length trenches—sometimes belted with strings of leather, or doubled up to create the illusion of extra layers—were unimpeachable, the kind of thing you could shrug on without a thought and immediately feel elegant in.
This season Asakawa had taken a more intuitive approach—“following what I liked more directly” was how he put it. This yielded a fresh sensuality that came through in V-neck sweaters that plunged down to the sternum and beyond, and in some excellent pairs of billowy trousers with side-slits that flashed skin while in motion but remained undetectable otherwise.
Also new were the shorn sheep fur coats that added some gloss to the mix. Sumptuously sophisticated, they made for a convincing marriage between quiet luxury and the mob wife aesthetic. Asakawa hadn’t heard of the viral TikTok trend of the moment—the Carmela Soprano look is not big in Japan—but was pleased to know his designs could get the imagination going.
The brand shot the collection look book in Paris—an increasingly popular move for Tokyo designers looking to expand their appeal abroad, which Stein is doing increasingly well (it has doubled its international stockists to 30 accounts this season alone)—but the white dado wall/parquet floor setting was something we’ve seen before. If Stein can bring in the same laser focus to the nit-picky optics as it does its coats, it could well become the brand to beat.
