What's in a name? Self-taught Shinpei Yamagishi brushes aside questions about the meaning behind enigmatic BED j.w. FORD, a label he has grown from its initial collection of relaxed yet spirited tailoring, all the way to its global runway presentations spanning Tokyo to Florence. Though intensely varied, each season focuses on highlighting three of the most charming facets of BED j.w. FORD: colors, fabrics, and silhouettes, all equally lush and intimate. Spongey rayons and flapping necklines are frequently paired with otherwise masculine shapes, while hyperconventional classics are cut open, tinkered with, and reassembled with plenty of entropic topstitching. A running motif across collections is the presence of unfinished edges—pant ankles, pocket mouths, leather hems, all so raw they look as if they had just been freshly torn.

Above all, maybe the greatest allure of BED j.w. FORD is its incarnation of poetry. Life in itself is fragile and painful, and simultaneously overflows with burning, heartfelt moments. BED j.w. FORD encapsulates this bittersweet pill within slashed wool jackets, fluid trousers with dangling cut-outs, playful button fringe, and considered simplifications—reduction to buttonless forms, self-ties in place of fasteners, breezy vents in precisely the right places. Altogether, Yamagishi's BED j.w. FORD soliloquizes on the human experience: the split desire in a cluttered world to pare our lives down but also to adorn ourselves with the beauty passing before our very eyes. And who says we can't have it both ways? 

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