Common threads: Hiroki and Kelsi Nakamura’s textile collection
By Jordan Hruska
Photography by: Keisuke Fukamizu
Hiroki Nakamura founded visvim in 2001 with the aim to design everyday clothing with the same soul as the vintage garments he revered growing up. Obsessive research into the history of American and Japanese workwear informs each of visvim’s collections. Nakamura, however, isn’t guided by nostalgia. His interest in these utilitarian pieces is motivated by the desire to create robust, hardworking garments that are earnest in purpose, grounded in lasting comfort, and immune to shifts in trend. To achieve this synthesis, Nakamura’s investigations delve into the meticulous and sometimes forgotten craft techniques that originally spirited vernacular workwear into being. The evidence of craft helps Nakamura and his wife and collaborator, Kelsi, recognize the human hand in Japanese textiles and other objects that they discover on their travels. Their rustic Edo-period Tokyo home is a vitrine for these cherished collections, a constellation of artifacts with mysterious backstories and noble patina, which continue to inspire them in their work.
Hiroki and Kelsi Nakamura also collect vintage Herman Miller pieces.
Tell us how visvim began. What were you were trying to make and why?
I wanted to make something I actually wanted to wear. Growing up in Japan in the 1980s, I was surrounded by Americana—vintage denim, military outerwear, work clothes. These items had been designed for a specific purpose, and that purpose gave them a kind of honesty I found irresistible. The shapes, the cuts, the material choices all made sense. But I was wearing them on the street, not on Mt. Everest or a construction site. So, I started asking myself, “How do you design something for everyday life that carries that same authenticity?” That’s how the brand started.
How does research drive your process?
Instinct always comes first. If something moves me, and also moves Kelsi, it’s a good sign. It can be an old garment, a piece of porcelain, the work of an architect—and that instinctual feeling is the starting point. Then I go backwards. I study the object and try to understand why it moves me. I build a theory. And then I translate that theory into fabric. Our design process is a combination of feeling and examination. If both are working, the finished piece can move someone else the same way the original moved me.
What does craftsmanship mean to you? Why does it matter?
When something is made by a craftsman, it carries the character of the person who made it. That quality is getting rarer. When I look at a Navajo blanket, I’m struck by how everything about it is imperfect and yet so beautiful. It’s balanced, organic, like a garden. I think craftsmanship and nature are expressing the same thing. As the world becomes more digital, more convenient, I believe people are instinctively drawn back to that human touch. It’s a kind of counterbalancing.
How do you blend Japanese craft traditions with the American aesthetic that originally inspired you?
Tell us about a moment when a workshop genuinely changed how you saw material.
About 17 years ago I met a team that specializes in natural dyeing. Before that I simply loved vintage pieces—I hadn’t stopped to ask why the colors were so beautiful, why they faded the way they did. Then it hit me: it’s the natural dye. The nuance, the depth, the way the color changes over time—all of that comes from the dye process. One workshop they introduced me to was on Amami Island, where the soil is rich in iron from ancient volcanic activity. They use the local rice paddies to dye silk. They bury the garments in the volcanic mud, and it emerges eventually with a beautiful patina and color. At my suggestion, they started dyeing cotton and nylon as well. We sent military bomber jackets to sit in the mud of the rice fields. Hundreds of them, all in a row outside the paddies. It was quite a view.
You’re a serious collector of Japanese textiles. Why did you start collecting?
Collecting is just an extension of how we work. Kelsi and I are always hunting for inspiration—on weekends, traveling, even window shopping. We don’t need to buy something to be moved by it. But when we do find something, it becomes part of our home and our life. And it keeps giving. A piece you found years ago will catch you differently after you’ve changed. Inspiration comes back around. That’s the same thing that happens with the textiles in our collection—every time you look, you find something new.
Why are textiles so central to Japanese culture and identity?
One of the textiles you own has paper woven into it. How did you discover that?
Kelsi and I noticed it had an unusual dry touch on this one piece of fabric—not like any fabric we knew. We investigated and found that monks had used paper for calligraphy practice, writing their mantras over and over. Paper was precious, so when they were done, they cut it into strips, twisted them into yarn, and wove it into cloth. If you unravel the yarn, you can still see someone’s handwriting inside.
A peek at the collection
01 This is a chirimen2 silk textile—a slightly crinkled, summery fabric a little like seersucker. It has a printed stripe in deep browns, overlaid with a cloud motif made using katazome3: a stencil resist-print technique using persimmon-lacquered paper and brush-applied dye. The white areas are created with rice paste, and the brown is hand-brushed over the top. We found it in Tokyo antique shop and it’s around 100 years old.
02 Then there’s a bingata piece from Okinawa, which is particular to that island. It uses bright color applied with a glue resist or a freehand glue line, then it’s filled with dye that creates gradations. This piece is made from bashofu, a fiber extracted from the banana tree. It’s blonde in its natural state, slightly rough, with a movement and body quite different from hemp. To make a single jacket in bashofu takes two years.
03 We also have a sashiko piece. It’s a running, gridded hand-stitch used to reinforce very fine cotton, indigo-dyed, probably from the Edo period. The stitching made the fabric stronger so it could carry weight or survive generations of use.
04 And here we have a shimacho, which is a stripe sample book—"shima” means stripe in Japanese. You can imagine a tailor showing clients this book to choose the stripe for their kimono. The samples are woven in indigo and various natural fibers from the 1920s and ’30s, part of the Mingei movement that rediscovered the beauty of everyday folk craft.
1: Boro, meaning “rags,” describes the patchwork textiles that rural Japanese farming families created out of strict economic necessity. Boro patchwork textiles are comprised of scraps of worn cotton and hemp stitched together with meticulous running stitches to reinforce the integrity of the worn scraps.
2: Chrimen is a classic Japanese silk crepe distinguished by its fine, irregular surface texture, known as shibo, produced by the twist of the yarn.
3: Katazome is a traditional Japanese resist-dyeing technique in which hand-cut stencils and rice flour paste are used to produce clean, elaborate patterns, typically with indigo and other natural dyes.