Threading Relationships
For many of us westerners, Tomorrowland feels exciting and new. And though each season continues to carry that excitement with modern interpretations of classics, Tomorrowland is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year as a fashion empire - an empire built from the humble devotion to fabric.
It all begins with fabrication for Tomorrowland - a textile and tactile obsession that has a tapestried history beginning with one man.
Hiroyuki Sasaki was born near the US naval base at Yokohama in 1947, a time when post WWII reconstruction meant economic depression throughout the archipelago (as written about in previous back-stories, Ametora Book Review and Cultural History of the Noragi Jacket). Because the isolationist policies of the past had been quashed and the ports forced open to western interests, cultural influencing commerce came up from the docks and the class-structured uniformity began its slow fade. For the first time in the nation’s history, Japanese men and women began to experiment with individual style.
Sasaki was fascinated by western style and culture, watching sharply dressed, shore-leave soldiers climb from Tokyo Bay ports into the city - arm in arm with pretty wives touting brightly-colored, flowing dresses. It inspired him to reach into the colorful world.
After university, Sasaki took a job at an international textile export company, beginning relationships he has stewarded ever since. Traveling the world and gaining a depth of manufacturing knowledge and partnerships, Sasaki was ready to go out on his own and launched Tomorrowland in 1978.
Beginning with both knitting manufacturing and as a multi-label retailer, Tomorrowland, after 40 years, has organically grown into a cultural colossus - fostering countless labels across the oceans of fashion - from needle-workers to designers.
And those relationships continue to be the most important thing to him: The indefatigable Hiroyuki Sasaki still visits every one of his 150+ stores in Japan (and one in NYC), designs the interiors and fixtures, meets with the thirteen in-house labels, consults with his worldwide family of designers and manufacturers, and makes an attempt to meet every one of his ~1600 employees.
So what does it all mean for you?
It means quality and price point. Because Tomorrowland owns and invests in the manufacturing, you’ll find yourself with detail rich fabrics and construction. Their attention to those details is so magnified that it takes an average of three months to produce a Tomorrowland clothing sample good enough to be cut into one of their sophisticated silhouettes.
Their signature deconstructed take on classic Ivy Style has the consistent casual elegance of timeless favorites that can be effortlessly mixed and matched season after season.
Wearing something this nice is an experience to build a closet behind…
*Tomorrowland is no longer available at Canoe Club