At the age of 13, Keiko Shimizu shared a room with her older brother. Among his things, one day she found a magazine that followed the Ivy League Style, that American trend that reinterpreted the elegance of universities. Soon after, she discovered the Made in U.S.A. catalog, a book that showed the main brands and trends born in the United States and that for many was seen as the Bible from which Popeye was built.
NEEDLES EXPLAINED THROUGH ITS REFERENCES
The father of Keiko Shimizu, Needles’ founder, was the manager of a movie theatre that was specialised in Western films The soundtrack of her childhood was plagued with sounds of galloping horses and cowboys and Native Americans, things that weren’t anywhere close to her real life. That theatre, that was sort of a playground for Keiko Shimizu, created an image for her that we would later see reflected in workwear clothing, denim and embroidered shirts
Shimizu studied design with the only intention of following some of the names she used to read in her favourite magazines but her approach to fashion was closer to imports than retail. She worked in vintage and American merchandise stores until the year 1988, when she opened her own store, Nepenthes. To run the place, she counted with the help of her former employee, Daiki Suzuki, who would be in charge of importing products from the United States.
Needles was the first brand created by Shimizu and Suzuki with the intention of creating their own product that had to be more sophisticated but at the same time had to keep their debt to American designs. The garment that started it all was a Miles Davis jacket they tried to replicate. The logo, a butterfly, was inspired by the Steve McQueen tattoo in Papillon. Needles would be followed by Engineered Garments or South2 West8 as brands that belonged to the Nepenthes group.
With Daiki Suzuki already based in the United States, first in San Francisco and later in New York, Needles is focused not only in replicating that American style but also in merging it with different references, recreating new garments through vintage products and remixing American culture with an advanced Japanese design.
