Kyoto, since 2016
The atelier
Studio Kōen began in 2016 in a former tatami workshop in Kyoto with two cutting tables and one idea: make fewer things, from honest cloth, and keep mending them. Today we are nine people. We cut outerwear, knitwear, dresses and trousers in runs of forty, from mills we can visit by train, and we seal every finished piece with a small vermilion stamp — our promise that we would wear it ourselves.
Honest cloth
Undyed where we can, dyed with sumi and persimmon where we cannot. No blends that cannot be mended or recycled.
Small runs
Forty pieces or fewer, cut to order. When a run is gone, it is gone — and nothing is burned or sent to a sale.
Mended for life
Send it back with a note. We darn, re-seam and re-button anything we have made, for free, for as long as you wear it.
How a piece is made
01Cloth
Each season starts with a train journey to the mills: Bishu for wool, Kojima for heavy cotton, and our linen partners in Normandy and Belfast.
02Pattern
Patterns are drafted and graded in the atelier, then tested on the studio rail for a month of daily wear.
03Dye
Where a colour is needed we dye with sumi ink, indigo or persimmon tannin, in small vats, by hand.
04Seal
Every finished piece is pressed, checked and stamped with our vermilion seal before it leaves Kyoto.
