Beauty in Time's Passing: The Kapital Kathmandu Shirt

In 1985, Toshikiyo Hirata founded Kapital in Kojima in the Okayama Prefecture of Japan. The brand's name derives from Kojima often being called the "denim capital of the world." Like many elite Japanese denim brands, Kapital started by making reproductions of vintage American denim garments.

But Kapital has developed into a wholly unique entity. With Toshikiyo Hirata now as president and his son Kiro Hirata as lead designer, Kapital still pays homage to vintage American denim, but more and more of their collection finds playful liminal space between decades and cultures like indigo dyeing the Virgin Mary onto a noragi, a Japanese farmer's jacket - for decades a symbol of poverty.

Kapital has made many iterations of the Kathmandu Shirt each a celebration of time's passing, of aging, of mending.

The Kathmandu Shirt bears evidence of years of hard work. A chest pocket has fallen off and another pocket has been sewn onto the side. Seemingly, without enough fabric to make the shirt of one cloth, it is a patchwork of indigo-dyed cottons and linens. Each of the buttons is unique and beautiful. Kapital is evidence of the beauty in aging and their garments embody that, too, here, in the fraying indigo collar and hemline, for example.

Check out our Kapital collection here.