The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Friday December 12th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Friday December 12th — —

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” – Herbert Simon — Friday December 12th — —

Engineered Garments Workaday by JIMA

The New York City-based fashion label Engineered Garments showcases its incredible sub-label Workaday in this editorial that was brought to our attention at the end of October by Inventory and still is one of our favorite outings of this year. The extraordinary editorial was launched by the mother company of Engineered Garments and label Needles, the highly inspirational Japan and USA-based collective/stores Nepenthes, and shows the intrinsic skill and style of the regularly contributing highly talented Japanese photographer JIMA once again, portraying the workwear-heavy line along familiar themes. Workadays has a strong focus on jackets and work pants, or maybe even better referred to as uniforms, which are offered in military greens and shades of blue. Overall the collection boasts boxy silhouettes similar to ’60s USMC uniforms, contrast shades are used across patch pockets and trouser panels can be observed on the bottoms. The editorial shows the pieces on a group of classical looking men strolling around The Big Apple in an aesthetic reminding strongly of the great street-photographers like Louis Faurer and Garry Winogrand, combined with the cool of filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Jean-Luc Godard. Highly inspirational!

The Japanese visionary Keizo Shimizu started Nepenthes as a menswear distributor in 1988 and a year later, opened the company’s first foray into the retail sector in Aoyama, a section of Tokyo known for its fashion houses, shopping and restaurants. 1989 would also see Shimizu’s expansion into the United States, starting off in Boston and then moving to New York in 1996. It was here that they began to create their own brands, including Daiki Suzuki’s highly acclaimed Engineered Garments. The first American Nepenthes store was opened in 2010 and is located in a former union sewing shop in Manhattan’s Garment District, where there’s been no change to the outside of the shop and therefore one could easily pass by it without knowing what’s inside. Which is an extraordinary well-curated collection of utilitarian, artisanal and eccentric pieces, many of which are available in the United States for the first time.

The highly talented photographer going by the name of JIMA was born as Atsushi Nishijima, and after finishing high school in Shizuoka near Mt. Fuji, the photographer moved to New York City to study his craft. Since his first assignment, shooting stills for Nike’s ‚Battlegrounds: King of the Court project, he has worked as a still-photographer on movies such as The Place Beyond the Pines, Blood Ties, St. Vincent and one of the most anticipated movie for next year Birdman. In addition to his work in film, JIMA has also produced editorial content for magazines such as Brutus, Ginza, Popeye, and Inventory Magazine, and regularly shoots lookbooks, like this particular one, for Engineered Garments. In 2013, Nepenthes New York published his first book named ‚Loiter’, with hopefully more to follow in the near future.

See here for more information on ‚Loiter’.

For more information and work by JIMA see here.

For Nepenthes see here.