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There are a few oddities to writing about niche clothing brands and makers. One of them is that — unless you have the means, contacts and/or influence — you often write about things you’ve seen but never touched or worn. I myself, at any rate, find this a bit uncomfortable at times: one of my ambitions is to advocate an approach to clothing focused on the actual garment rather than its visual and textual representation. But more often than not, photographs, descriptions and brand concepts are all I have.
Another oddity is that even without having seen a piece of clothing in person — let alone having touched or worn it — it is sometimes possible to immediately know what you’re dealing with. When you’re “into” clothing for a while, you begin to recognize similarity-based patterns, relating to silhouettes, styling, aesthetic and overall feel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are linked in turn to certain countries or even cities. There is no doubt this is due in no small part to the way in which the clothing is represented. But while I don’t have any hard evidence (could there ever be such a thing?) I’m convinced this also has to do with the material origins of the clothing itself. Think of the clean yet innovative designs of Scandinavian brands (from OUR LEGACY to SUN BUDDIES) or the dark tones of Japanese artisanal makers and the bright colors of French and Spanish designers. Perhaps it’s all branding, yet no branding comes from nowhere.
Long story short, a clear case in point are new Tokyo-based brands. In recent years, they have become instantly recognizable due to their simple yet distinctive silhouettes and understated luxury. One example is AURALEE and A.PRESS, which have rapidly become household names on lists of go-to Japanese brands. But there are many others, just out of sight of the masses. BLANC YM definitely is among them.
Founded in 2015, BLANC YM is the sole creation of Yutaro Miyauchi. A young clothing designer — born in 1989 in Yohohama — he got into clothes in the early 2000s when Urahara-brands like BAPE and WTAPS were at their peak. Miyauchi started BLANC YM a few years after graduating from Bunka Fashion College, where he attended the evening course. The style he envisioned was a reckoning with his own past. “I think my generation was more into the culture around clothes, but I was more interested in the clothes themselves [and] their design and origins,” he said in a recent interview with HONEYEE.COM.
After his graduation, Miyauchi felt strongly that he didn’t want to work for a large company. Instead, he wanted to start his own brand right away, “just because I love clothes.” Looking back, this was perhaps “a bit reckless” as he didn’t have any professional connections or previous experience with the business side of running a brand.
BLANC YM’s first collection — SS15 — was very modest, containing four or five styles and ten pieces in total. “I only had one rack of trench coats, trousers and t-shirts.” “Luckily,” Miyauchi recalls, “I soon found a few stockists, which gave me a good start…not only financially but also in terms of motivation.” One reason behind this stroke of luck: Japan. “Even a small brand like ours receives inquiries from shops in various countries,” Miyauchi says, “which gives a sense of the global reputation of Japanese brands.”
From the start, back in 2015-16, one of Miyauchi’s aims for BLANC YM was to cooperate with fabric suppliers and sewing factories, of which there are plenty in Japan. Because he did not have a backbone in the industry, however, he first had to start looking for these suppliers and factories himself. As Miyauchi recalls in a recent interview: “I knew that Bishu in Aichi was famous for wool and Hamamatsu in Shizuoka for cotton…, so I went to the local chambers of commerce and industry and asked them if I could see their factories. I also looked for sewing companies through my friends,” which took a lot of time and energy.
Around 2018 things really started to take off for BLANC YM, with the number of stockists in Asia steadily growing. The brand has since been releasing two collections every year of about 15 to 20 styles each, all wonderfully photographed. Their latest collection — AW24 — is arguably their strongest to date, which is telling of the brand’s growth. “Basically, there are no major changes from season to season.” Moreover, the basic idea is always the same: “…it’s a garment that I want to wear, so it takes a lot of time before I’m satisfied, and improvements from the 1st and 2nd samples are routine…I believe that in order to make something that can be worn for a long time, I need [a long] time for evaluation.”
It is this strong focus on a “garment-first approach” which has enabled BLANC YM to develop their own distinctive design language: deceptively simple, high-quality oversized styles. The AW24 collection consists of instantly recognizable signature pieces such as the ‘Short Trench Coat’, ‘Wide Shirt’, ‘Easy Trousers’ and ‘Mohair Knit Polo’ — all in generous, sometimes exaggeratedly wide, cuts.
BLANC YM’s “garment-first approach” also implies that fabrics are chosen to fit the garment, and not the other way around. “I don’t believe that original [private-order] fabrics are better, and I don’t think that using existing fabrics mean that I am cutting corners,” as Miyauchi puts it. This creates the liberty to use both luxury and synthetic fabrics, from cashmere to nylon, using them freely as he himself sees fit — combining part-silk trench coats, polyester vests, and kid mohair knits in one and the same collection.
Of course, Miyauchi emphasizes, any garment is always the result of an interaction between design and fabric. “One of my sources of inspiration is fabric. I try to create designs that make the most of the materials. It’s similar to the Japanese dish sushi,” he explains in a down-to-earth manner. If a garment is like the feeling of appetite, and a design is like a particular dish, then the fabric used for the design of the garment is like “the vegetables you harvested in the field or the fish you caught.” You work with what you have and do the best you can.
This finally brought us to the name BLANC YM, which combines the French word for “white” with the initials of his own name. Miyauchi has it that BLANC YM is '“neither a product brand” nor a “brand image-oriented brand.” But it’s also “not inspiration-, material- or design-driven.”
Perhaps BLANC YM is more like a blank canvas, then? Looking at the dictionary, this refers to “something with no existing restraints that can be freely developed". Or, to paraphrase: a piece of clothing formed only by experiences. That feels about right. It also fits the brand’s cryptic philosophy: “Universality, Diversity, +α”, where “α” stands for the Greek letter alpha, meaning “primary” or “principal.” BLANC YM creates free size, unisex clothes — easy-going, high-quality basics, coming in well-balanced collections, that fit into and upgrade almost any wardrobe. Miyauchi’s ambition, therefore, makes perfect sense: “We would like to deliver our clothes to people all over the world. That’s the future of the brand.”