Taichi Murakami

By the age of 30, before being a fashion designer, Taichi Murakami worked at the fashion store Lift Daikanyama. An extraordinary boutique selling artisanal brands like Carol Christian Poell and M.A+. At some point, Murakami decided to study Fashion in Tokyo and after four years, received a scholarship to study pattern making in Milan. From his time working at Lift, Taichi Murakami had fallen in love with M.A+, especially with Maurizio Amadei‘s patterns. Once in Milan, he wrote Maurizio Amadei and was thereupon hired as a patternmaker at M.A+ in 2009. At this position, Taichi Murakami was free to experiment with materials and patterns. He even was encouraged to create prototypes with different materials which made him learn to be flexible in his design thinking and that there is no process that must be followed repeatedly, an idea that contrasted with Japan’s strict work mentality.

As a result, Taichi Murakami does not see himself as a designer, rather as a clothing constructor, paying tremendous attention to detail and innovative patterns. After several years of assisting at M.A+, he decided to start his own eponymous label back home in Japan. For Taichi Murakami, the design process starts with Yarn, instead of with fabric. He obsessively searches for the right yarn at the beginning of each creation process, the yarn from which he can imagine what the fabric would look like. He even takes it so far that he creates his own fabrics, for example by incorporating paper or stainless steel in order to create his own unique fabrics.