[ENGINEERED GARMENTS SPRING SUMMER 2022]

With the Engineered Garments Spring Summer 2022 collection now available in-store, we decided to find out what this collection is all about, and share it with our customers in the hope of providing some insight. 

Engineered Garments designer Daiki Suzuki is known for his nearly encyclopedic knowledge of American clothing, gained from his decades of experience as a buyer - first in Japan and then in the United States. He spent much of the 1980s working in an imported American goods store in Shibuya, finding new products and cultivating his knowledge of clothing, factories, and everything related to traditional, workwear, and military styles. 

The influence from the brands Daiki worked with and learned about during this era - Banana Republic, British Khaki, Willis & Geiger, among many others - can be seen not just the EG Spring Summer 2022 collection, but across all seasons. The adventurous and rugged spring of these trekking garments filled him with a lasting sense of wonder and yen for exploration. 

This abiding interest in clothes during the 1980s merged with Daiki’s awakening to the sounds of post-punk and new wave artists who were electrifying the world. He saved up what little money he had to buy records like Malcolm Mclaren’s Duck Rock, Peter Gabriel’s Peter Gabriel 4, and of course The Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, entranced by their melding of African percussion and rhythm with typical rock sounds to create new sonic expression. The groundbreaking acoustics and personal fashion of these musicians helped shape his core taste and aesthetic sensibilities.

In fall of 2020, as Daiki watched the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, he was struck not only by the movie’s gorgeous visuals, but the concept of rewilding the world. Not simply a call for conservationism, rewilding involves protecting biodiversity, renewable energy, healthier diets, and curbing human beings’ impact on the earth, so that we can be around to enjoy it for longer. 

The rewilding approach opened a sudden connection to the influences that he had felt so deeply in his youth - the work of classic American brands, the music that impacted him, and the notion of leaving something behind to let others live longer, and sensed these impressions centering around Africa. 

With the Engineered Garments Spring/Summer 2022 collection Daiki Suzuki elevates the familiar by imbuing it a new aesthetic, choosing Africa as the throughline that connects this amalgamation of ideas within his mind. As a result, the collection features silhouettes that invoke the heydey of such classic brands as Abercromie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren, and Ruff Hewn, and a fresh color palette filled with blues, greens and khakis. Persistent through all is an urging to return to a more wilder time, in order to safeguard the future.