Defining "Innovation and Tradition" With FACETASM

FACETASM‘s Hiromichi Ochiai is the latest guest to join HYPEBEAST CN’s series Breaking Bread. In episode four, Boris Yu sits down with the designer at Florilège Shibuya, a creative modern-French establishment owned by chef Hiroyasu Kawate that was originally tucked away in the residential backstreets of Aoyama. It’s now moved to a new location in Jingumae with a substantially reworked menu that’s comprised of three-hour-plus dinner tasting courses with 13 dishes, and six at lunch. This episode follows features with AMBUSH‘s Yoon and Verbal as well as MIHARAYASUHIRO.

Kicking off the episode, Ochiai explains some of the meaning behind the name of his label: one part of the name reflects taking on new challenges and values with each new season, and another part symbolizes its multi-faceted approach to design, like “a diamond with many sides.” The label broke onto the scene with its SS16 collection in Milan, which was a major factor in his LVMH prize nomination in the same year. Since then, Ochiai has been leading FACETASM to its international forefront with consecutive well-received collections at Paris Fashion Week.

Dubbed “Innovation and Tradition,” Boris Yu and Ochiai discuss the designer’s early grassroots days in ’90s Harajuku, his current views on youth culture and his label. Throughout their chat, Ochiai describes some of his muses, like Martin Margiela and Jun Takahashi, while expressing his thoughts on the balance between tradition and modernity.

This episode features references to the following:

01:10 – Harajuku Fashion Movement
05:03 – Debut & Global Fashion Scene
07:32 – The New And The Tradition
12:02 – Offspring

Watch the full “Innovation and Tradition” episode above, and stay tuned to HYPEBEAST for the next episode of Breaking Bread with Hirofumi Kiyonaga of SOPH.

In case you missed it, check out Junya Watanabe’s eclectic SS21 lookbook.