u/leftypoint
▲ 18 r/ThrowingFits
Designing the perfect summer shirt 🤯
@arran.studios gtfo
u/leftypoint — 3 days ago
▲ 28 r/ThrowingFits
u/leftypoint — 7 days ago
▲ 159 r/ThrowingFits
Evan Kinori discourse breaches containment
Mentions:
- Substack
- "...lots of chatter surrounding Evan Kinori..." / fabricateurialist
- Monastic Menswear Gets a Reckoning: What happens when mud-dyed clothing becomes a meme?
- Consumerism with the veil of exceptionalism: Evan kinori, natty-dye guys, and clothing as personality.
- BBSP sneakdiss "It's just clothes, and the stakes are enormous"
- Twitter
- 253k views - DRAMA IN MENSWEAR: the ThrowingFits bros are revolting against blackbird spyplane and evan kinori
- "But the argument of “this 700 dollar pair of Belgian linen pants will wear beautifully over time and I’ll be able to keep them for decades” is pretty funny considering most of them sell after 4 months and 3 wears"
u/leftypoint — 8 days ago
▲ 46 r/ThrowingFits
u/leftypoint — 9 days ago
▲ 1 r/ThrowingFits
Da $4,790 Evan Kinori boots to feel principled while consooming extravagantly
u/leftypoint — 10 days ago
▲ 9 r/ThrowingFits
Suggested names: YN Lemaire, YG Auralee, etc.
u/leftypoint — 12 days ago
▲ 106 r/ThrowingFits
or Slow Fashion’s Wonder Child unraveled...
1. The Allure of 'Substance'
What made him compelling initially was that he seemed to be making a genuine argument about what clothing ought to be in a culture increasingly treating everything as disposable.
His writing, using "five years | a shirt made here" as an example, cites labor, patience, touch, wear, and what he calls “weight,” not only in the physical sense of cloth and construction, but in the emotional and ethical sense of objects that carry time inside them. In interviews he talks about “mystery," physical presence and the importance of clothing feeling substantial in a world that increasingly does not.
It resonated because he named something many people already sensed: modern life has become both frictionless and hollow. He provided an image of clothing rooted in material reality as well as craft. For a while that vision felt sincere in a refreshing way.
These instincts were ‘real’ enough for a time, but later became the foundation for a much broader aesthetic and moral project that learned how to turn sincerity into branding architecture more effectively than anyone else in this sect of fashion. What began as a thoughtful argument for slower, more meaningful clothing slowly devolved into a system of signs, references, and narratives that now asks every garment to carry a philosophical burden heavier than any shirt or pair of pleated pants reasonably should.
Evan Kinori himself in his stomp clap hey bag c. 2016
2. When Taste Starts Calling Itself Ethics
Once clothing is wrapped in enough seriousness, buying moves closer to tithing. It starts to look like evidence of character, proof of discernment, and a reflection of one’s values. Accumulation gets conflated with connoisseurship, and owning multiple versions of essentially the same garment no longer reads as overconsumption because each variation comes with its own story about weave, handfeel, drape, irregularity, or some obscure mill relationship that supposedly justifies the difference et al.
One can hear that logic in the way EK gets discussed. Noah Johnson has described the store as a “temple of zen style,” which is illuminating because typically temples remind people of higher values and purify by ritual. Another GQ puff piece described EK customers as “connoisseurs or collectors than mere shoppers,” drawing a distinction that feels sophisticated while preserving the same consoomer logic underneath it.
The collector still buys expensive clothes, often a lot of them, but understands that consumption through a flattering language of taste and seriousness. Ordinary appetite gets recast as refined judgment - which is what makes Evan Kinori such a contradiction. The clothes are not presented as just clothes… instead they’re positioned as evidence of restraint and/or cultivated living. Demanding too much weight on the object, and the whole thing too far up its own ass…
3. The Critic Class Made It Worse
A part of that inflation came from the likes of GQ dipshits and Blackbird Spyplane, effectively transforming Evan Kinori from a into something to a moral symbol of sorts. Samuel Hine writes about an “airtight aesthetic universe,” lingering over pottery, interiors, scent, atmosphere, and cultivated stillness in a way that makes the brand feel less like a clothing label than a complete philosophy of tasteful living. Vogue pedals a tangential idea, describing the “communal circularity” around EK and suggesting that “his selling point is his nicheness,” pushing a luxury brand into having a self-contained moral and aesthetic worldview.
Blackbird Spyplane pushes even harder in that direction, waxing about “priorities,” “substance,” “weight,” and “discernment” until ordinary wardrobe choices read as evidence of inner development. Naturally, choosing washed linen over a logo-driven 50/50 blend is treated as quasi-proof of seriousness. He depicts the Evan Kinori consoomer like himself as more disciplined, more discerning, and somehow in deeper contact with what matters than the rest of us plebs.
One exchange between Jonah and Evan captures the aforementioned dynamic succinctly. Jonah writes, “When I find a sturdy, beautiful piece, and I wear it over and over and over, it tends to look better than it did when it was new. Whereas if my clothes stay stuck in that state of newness, I tend to look less dope, which might be the strongest argument against consumerism anyone needs.” Evan responds, “Sometimes a brand-new pair of sneakers is nice, but, yeah, usually clothes that are worn and loved have a charm that brand-new ones don’t.”
Evan’s point is pretty ordinary: worn clothes often have more character than brand new ones. What gets layered onto that observation is where things get messy. Jonah takes that ordinary truth and expands it into a sweeping moral claim, but in doing so he also exposes the vanity sitting underneath the rhetoric. The line about looking “less dope” gives the game away, because what is being described is still fundamentally about aesthetic self-image... all the while camouflaged in the language of anti-consumer ethics.
Taste begins to shoulder the weight of moral seriousness, and what could have remained a mere appreciation for well-worn garments gets loaded with enough symbolic meaning to flatter the buyer past what the clothes themselves can reasonably hold.
Above: see Bode to Evan Kinori pipeline
4. From Personal Project to Luxury Institution
The overall sense of inflation is more pronounced when you look at what the brand has morphed into structurally. What began as a personal project now carries the marks of an institution. Institutions are skilled at preserving the feeling of intimacy long after the original love of the game has been absorbed into a larger operation.
from \"new editions for spring / now available on the site\"
Evan described his most recent collection through “textile exploration” and points to natural fibre blends, cold dye processes and “subtle irregularity” in the finished garments. But subtle doesn't align with what he put out... as the fabric irregularity should ostensibly be the first thing you notice. Cold dyed hemp cotton and washi twill. Linen cotton herringbone. Yarn dyed hemp cotton stripe with a "dark brown weft which adds depth and a subtle wobble in the weave as the dark olive and charcoal stripes pass in and out of the dark brown." Fabrics layered with sumi charcoal and natural pigments until variation insists upon itself. These textiles read as some sort of rarified 'special' on first impression.
Which begins to resemble hype in a different language... where instead of logos or overt branding, the signal is texture dye and visible variation. You do not need close study to register what makes the garment distinct. It also follows from the structure of the line. The silhouettes have stayed largely the same for years and return season after season while prices continue to rise. With shape mostly fixed fabric is the primary place where newness can be introduced. As a result fabric gets pushed harder because it has to carry more of that weight, if you will...
More recently, the numbered editions have begun returning as re-cuts, which muddies the meaning of limitation in the first place. If an edition can quietly reappear in later seasons, it's harder to discern what the total production amounts to beyond the language of scarcity. For a brand that trades so heavily on sincerity and principle, greater transparency around output would go a long way toward clarifying what those numbers are meant to signify.
Small details point in the same direction. Personalized notes tucked into orders are signed by studio assistants in Evan’s name, and what were once handwritten fabric composition tags have given way to standardized printed labels with country-of-origin information. It is, admittedly, a small detail, but it demonstrates how intimacy can be maintained as part of the experience even as the operation gets more formalized. The feeling remains personal as the process behind it grows more and more managed.
The move into furniture and domestic objects make that change ever the more apparent. Bowls priced at $2,500 and furniture approaching $13,000 suggest a world that surpasses mere clothing. What is being built is not simply a 'slow fashion clothing label' but a broader retail environment shaped around a specific idea of tasteful living. The clothes, objects and presentation all work together to support that image.
$9,000+ onna EK couch (seriously)
Shirts, ceramics, furniture, interiors, scent, and atmosphere are all bundled into the same carefully narrated story about seriousness, simplicity, and cultivated restraint. Although once Evan Kinori positioned itself as a corrective to overconsumption, it now increasingly resembles a total lifestyle project for affluent buyers... just executed with more subtlety and better fabrics than most.
Some of you aren't ready for this conversation
5. Who It Actually Serves
The sharpest contradiction is who EK ultimately 'compliments' in the end, so to speak. A brand built on slowness, material conscience, and distance from disposable culture has become deeply attractive to founders, executives, financiers, and the broader managerial class, all the way up to Mark Zuckerberg. These parasites are wearing cultivated modesty whist sitting atop some of the largest engines of technological abstraction and cultural flattening on earth!
Zuck in a Evan Kinori x LWC $130 Pocket Tee in the \"earth\" colorway on Joe Rogan (how ironic)
EK’s orbit, including heads like a Nestlé corporate finance director recurrently appearing as an editorial model, heighten the contradiction because the image is too fitting. Corporate power is shrouded beneath artisanal sincerity. Evan’s own line, “We don’t let cheap junk make its way to the table for consideration,” reveals how easily aesthetic preference can slip into the register of moral seriousness.
Ultimately, Evan Kinori offers moral cover for wealthy people to spend exorbitant amounts on clothes whilst feeling principled doing so. Consumption is messy and ethics rarely sit cleanly inside luxury. What makes his world particularly grating is how readily that mess gets hidden beneath seriousness and self-regard, transubstantiating ordinary luxury shopping into an act that feels perversely insulated from the contradictions that persist nevertheless.
Evan Kinori for the average consoomer: soft-boy wealth cosplay but make it Japanese
Also see: thread on Evan Kinori fabric fetishism and a TLDR
u/leftypoint — 17 days ago
▲ 246 r/ThrowingFits
u/leftypoint — 18 days ago