visvim's $15,000 USD Free Edge Shirt Sets New Standards of Opulence
Arguably Hiroki Nakamura’s most lavish creation to date.
Recently seen on die-hard fan John Mayer, one of visvim‘s most premium SS19 items has finally hit stores. Retailing for a whopping $14,720 USD — before tax — the shirt is one of the Japanese brand’s priciest drops, ever.
Though it’s easy to write off the nearly-$15,000 USD price tag as a number randomly drawn from a hat, there is some justification here. The process of creating the Free Edge Hyakunin-Isshu demands special craft, drawing from ancient techniques utilized in crafting high-end Japanese kimono and driving the manufacturing costs up as a result.
To start, special chiri-men crepe silk, twisted over 3,000 times per meter, was sourced for each shirt. There are more affordable polyester blend silks used in contemporary kimono, but visvim opted for a much more challenging route, selecting pure silk woven at a historic mill. Each shirt, once assembled from the delicate fabric, is dyed using historic katazurizome processes. Only highly-skilled artisans are able to properly achieve the seamless result, brushing each layer of color onto the fabric by hand to create the “print.”
Inspiration for the shirt’s imagery is equally rich in lore: the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a classical anthology of 100 Japanese waka poems by 100 poets. The text influenced the creation of a card game called uta-garuta, which is based around a deck of cards that directly acknowledge the stories contained in the venerable text. Imagery from the game’s cards is realized across the body of the seasonal Free Edge shirt, complementing the wooden buttons and open, Hawaiian-style collar.
The Hyakunin-Isshu shirt is waiting for John Mayer to snap it up on SV Moscow’s website. It will also hit visvim’s Exposition Los Angeles retail outpost.
To get your slightly more affordable visvim fix, we recently previewed the seasonal Beuys Trekker Folk boot.
