For Yusuke Takahashi, it’s all in the name. His brand, CFCL, reveals its ethos upon first read: Clothing for Contemporary Life. Fashion is an art form, but at its core also the practice of simply wearing something. For all of the industry’s ornateness, Takahashi opts for a label centered around making clothing for what he views as its inherent and paramount purpose: to simply be worn. The former longtime menswear director of Issey Miyake, Takahashi left the legendary house in 2020 to start his own brand: CFCL—a minimal Japanese brand orbiting around Takahashi’s commitment to producing clothes for anybody to wear. 

Raised in Tokyo with a fashion journalist mother and architect grandfather, Takahashi’s nascent interest in the latter’s profession eventually evolved into his first higher education as a textile designer. He was initially drawn to the discipline because of how dynamic he found the practice: “If we learn about the textile base, we can [learn about] the fashion textiles, and also the interior textiles, such as the sofa, carpet, curtains.” His early interest in architecture, fashion, textile design and its intersection blossomed into a fascination with the work of Hussein Chalayan, “because he combines the elements of architecture and product design in his fashion.” 

This infatuation with the British-Cypriot fashion designer led Takahashi to want to study at Goldsmiths in London (where Chalayan is based). “There, rather than pursuing only beautiful appearances, I explored powerful and innovative expressions,” he says of the time at the school, when he began to dive into more experimental approaches to design, such as the use of 3D knitting technology. 

His time in London led Takahashi to start to emphasize the importance of his Japanese identity. “As a fashion designer competing in Europe, I came to believe that I needed to better understand my own roots and use every aspect of Japanese culture as a tool when competing with other designers,” he says. He returned to Japan to study at the Bunka Fashion Graduate University, where he would win the Soen Prize, and eventually get an opportunity to work with Issey Miyake—which shaped a lot of his design language.

“Issey Miyake is very special—it’s a very different brand compared to the other fashion brands. A lot of architects, or some industrial designers, love to wear Issey Miyake,” he notes of how the brand overlaps with other disciplines. “The third year there, Mr. Miyake suggested me to be the men’s director of [the brand]. I spent around six and a half years as the director—and then I decided to make my own brand.”

The lessons he learned with Miyake would continue to inform his design ethos when starting CFCL. “All the young designers or students make clothes based on what only they want to make. But the designer should make some clothing for the market or demand. So Mr. Miyake actually taught me about a lot of this philosophy, why we are making the clothing, for the next generation of society,” he says, adding, “I brought some of that philosophy from Mr. Miyake, so I made the name CFCL. This is the acronym: Clothing for Contemporary Life.” The name was also rooted in an acknowledgement of the overproduction of clothing globally, and how it’s important to imbue clothing with a true purpose: “There is so much clothing in the world, more than the population of the world. It means there is clothing without meaning. Maybe we should incorporate more and more meaning, so I used this name.”

Takahashi recently released the brand’s first-ever menswear collection, an opportunity to expand his minimalist, practical garmentry to a wider audience. “I always start to make a collection by thinking about: What is the clothing for contemporary life?” Takahashi notes. “Almost all the fashion brands bring some elements from history or context of some army or performer jacket or something. They’ll bring some pockets from the French army, around half a century before,” he explains, adding, “We should make some clothing only fit for this contemporary life. So it means we want to remove the elements that don’t have a meaning at this moment. So that’s why it looks very minimal.”

Instead of looking to history for aesthetic inspiration, Takahashi’s practice looks to the past to develop his approach to design. “I bring some ideas from the Mingei Movement, a kind of Japanese design movement inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris. The name of the founder of the movement is Yanagi Sōetsu, who focuses on and describes the design you can find very fascinating or very beautiful in already existing crafts,” he explains, noting how an anonymous design practice helps re-emphasize the beauty of the innate function of garments. “The product only focuses on the beauty of the function or practicality.” 

Today, CFCL has six stores in Japan, with ambitions to expand globally. Still manufacturing all of its clothing in Japan, Takahashi maintains sustainability as a core element of the brand, with plans to be carbon neutral by 2030. In more avenues than just through its aesthetic, Takahashi’s label truly aims to make clothing for contemporary life.